


36 Views of Mt. Fuji: Winter

by Mithen



Series: 36 Views of Mt. Fuji [1]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Case Fic, Japanese Culture, M/M, Mutual Pining, Romance, Slow Burn, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-01 04:17:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12148449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: Early in their careers as superheroes, Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne travel to Japan to work on a case together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reposting of an old series from LJ. I've finally accepted that if I wait until I have enough time to import it all at once, I'll never do it, so it will be showing up here in fits and starts, depending on how chaotic my life is. Thanks for being patient with me.

__

_Far off against snow mountains_  
_Two crows are flying._  
_\--Murakami Kijou_

Bruce Wayne took a sip of champagne, then put the glass back.  He hit a couple of buttons and the chair he was in slid slowly to a nearly 180 degree angle, the footrest rising to accommodate his legs.  He looked over at his traveling companion, who was fiddling aimlessly with the seat controls.  Beyond Clark's sharp profile, through the airplane windows, he could see an endless expanse of cloud-studded blue

"I still would have preferred to fly--my way.  You know," said Clark uncomfortably, glancing out the window.  "I could have met you there."

Bruce sighed.  "If you're going to insist on 'helping me' in this case, you're going to have to travel as a civilian.  I'm not going to deal with the consequences if the Japanese government happens to find out Clark Kent is in the country without a passport or proper paperwork."  Remembering his first sight of Clark's passport, he snorted.  "I still can't believe you've never been out of the country!"

The man next to him looked a little embarrassed.  "I have!  Lots of times!  Just...not as Clark.  Well, I've been busy," he added defensively at Bruce's expression.  "I only came to Metropolis two years ago, and I've kind of had my hands full."  Bruce just shook his head.  He still couldn't quite believe this country mouse was the most powerful being on Earth.  They had found out each others' secret identities a little over a month ago, and Bruce still could hardly process it.

He stretched out his legs luxuriously.  "Well, at least I got us upgraded to business class."

Clark did not look mollified.  "I don't like it up here.  It doesn't feel right to have this much space and luxury with all those people crammed into coach behind us."

Bruce lifted his lip.  "Don't you go getting all Ollie Queen on me.  If I'm going to travel to Japan to follow some vague lead about a former classmate of mine, I'm going to make sure I arrive well-rested and with my reflexes intact.  If I'm going to have to deal with you tagging along and trying to help, I'm going to need my rest even more."

The stewardess came around with a plate of smoked salmon and salad.  Bruce waved a couple of small packets at Clark.  "Your choice, sea salt or rock salt."

Clark picked at his salad, frowning.  "It just doesn't feel right," he muttered.

"You wanted to come along and help.  You said it would give us a chance to see if we could work together on this whole League of Justness--"

"--Justice League--"

"--yeah, that.  So don't start complaining because you don't like the fact that as a mere human being, I actually need sleep to function well."

Clark glared at him.  "You're deliberately misrepresenting me.  That's not what I said at all."

Bruce watched the Kansan superhero dissect his meal, a thunderous frown still clouding his clear, broad face.  He had to admit he had no idea why he enjoyed needling Superman.  There was just something about him that rubbed Bruce the wrong way.  Whenever they were interacting, he couldn't seem to help deliberately riling the Kryptonian up, pointing out their differences and stressing their discontinuities.  Something about him resisted any attempt to empathize or bond with his fellow hero.  There didn't seem to be any good reason for it.  It wasn't just ideological differences;  Bruce got along with other straight-arrow superheroes well enough.  No, something about Clark Kent called forth the imp of the perverse in Bruce.  It was a mystery.

And Batman hated mysteries.

In part he had accepted Clark's offer to tag along to Japan to help unravel that mystery.  Because although Bruce couldn't seem to help tormenting Clark, Batman understood that pragmatically, he and Superman were going to have to work together for a long time.  It made no sense to constantly antagonize your most useful ally.

Batman intended to get to the bottom of that.

But for now, he couldn't seem to stop himself from leaning over and pushing Clark's inept hand away from the seat controls, lengthening the footrest until the man's feet were elevated and comfortable.  "These seats can accommodate even your ridiculously long legs.  And there's so much space between them no one can kick the back of your seat.  It seems to be a cast-iron rule of flying coach that there's always a young child behind you, determined to kick your seat the entire flight."  Bruce glared at the sullen Kryptonian.  "You're stuck here in business class, Clark, so get used to it."

He reclined his chair to its fullest extent and rolled onto his side, away from Clark.  "I'm getting some sleep."

* * *

Bruce emerged from a dream in which Clark was cooing quietly.  This seemed odd.  He looked over to find the seat next to him occupied by a young blond woman with a tiny infant resting on her chest.  She was making the cooing noise.  The baby looked over at Bruce, eyes wide and solemn, waving small chubby hands in the air.

"Oh," said the woman, noticing Bruce was awake.  "I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

"Not really," Bruce said cautiously.  "Where did--"

Her face lit up in a smile.  "Your friend was walking around.  He said he couldn't sleep.  When he saw Joe and I were having problems with Miranda, he offered to trade seats with me."  She rubbed the baby's tiny nose with a finger.  "And it's made all the difference, hasn't it, Randa-manda?"  The baby gurgled and her mother sighed.  "It's just too bad Joe can't be up here too.  It would be so nice if he could get some sleep before his big presentation.  I'll trade with him at some point and give him a turn up here, I suppose."

"He's not my friend," Bruce felt compelled to point out, both belatedly and lamely, a sense of fatalistic desperation settling over him.

The woman looked over at him and smiled again, beatifically.  "He's a saint, is what he is.  This is a lifesaver."

Bruce lay back down and closed his eyes.  _No, Clark.  No.  Forget it._   "This would be so perfect if Daddy were up here too, wouldn't it, smookums," the mother murmured to her child.  Bruce put a forearm over his eyes.

_No way.  Absolutely no way._

* * *

Bruce jolted awake again as the hyperactive child behind him kicked petulantly at his seat.  He glanced over at Clark in the next seat, his long legs folded like a jackknife into the narrow space between the rows.

Clark was sleeping soundly, an angelic smile on his face.  Bastard.

As the plane approached Tokyo, Bruce touched Clark on the shoulder to wake him.  "Look."  He pointed out the tiny window.

Beneath them lay Mt. Fuji, wreathed by puffy clouds, its gently sloping sides a hazy blue.  It looked like a wood-block print.  Clark rubbed his eyes and leaned close to the window.  "Wow," he breathed.  "It's gorgeous."

"Enjoy it now.  Air pollution makes it almost impossible to see from the ground most of the time."

"What a shame."

Bruce could see Clark's face reflected in the window.  The mountain beyond his image was majestic and flawless.  The eerily perfect planes of Clark's reflected face were in startling contrast to the warmth of his smile and blue eyes.

Bruce looked at Clark and through Clark to the mountain.

The most famous set of art about Mt. Fuji is Hokusai's wood-block series, "36 Views of Mt. Fuji."  The series is an exercise in learning to look at something from every possible vantage point, to understand it, and our reactions to it, as completely as possible.  Seeing Clark's face superimposed over the distant blue mountain, Bruce decided this trip would be his personal version of those pictures.  He'd examine Clark Kent from every angle and learn why the Kryptonian elicited such maddening responses in him.  
  
Maybe at the end of the trip they'd be able to work together.

Clark nodded to himself, grinning.  "That's amazing."  He looked at Bruce and pushed his useless glasses up on his nose.  "Now, don't you feel better back here in coach?"

The child behind Bruce delivered a particularly vicious kick, and Bruce winced.  "Oh yes.  I feel so happy and refreshed."

"Me too," said Clark, re-arranging his cramped legs

Maddening.

* * *

Clark Kent sat on his hotel bed and looked out over the sparkling lights of Tokyo, stretching on into infinity over the horizon in the darkness.

It wasn't as beautiful as Metropolis.

He and Bruce were supposed to be meeting another classmate of his during his time at Yoru-sensei's later this evening, but that was still an hour or so away.  Clark looked around the bare room again, then out at the city skyline once more.  It wasn't often he had this much spare time, actually.  Ever since meeting Batman's alter ego he'd been fascinated by the man, he was forced to admit to himself.  Clark had always rather imagined that Batman's unmasked persona would be some grim loner, holed up in that cave day and night.  To realize that the handsome, acerbic playboy who charmed women and condescended to hick farmboys with equal skill was also the Dark Knight--well, it wasn't exactly what Clark had expected.

Clark might find Bruce Wayne annoying and confusing, but Superman knew that a Justice League without Batman on it was probably doomed to failure from the start.  He had to find a way to break through the man's stubborn cynicism and gauge his ability to commit to a team.  So Clark had cashed in his yearly vacation from the Planet to travel to Japan with Bruce as a civilian.  To see if they could work together for longer than thirty minutes without wanting to throttle each other.

So far the odds didn't look very good.

He realized abruptly he'd finished at least his fifth circuit of the room.  Annoyance knifed through him again.  He wasn't here to wait on Bruce Wayne's beck and call, after all.  He stepped out of his room and went one door down, knocking briskly.

He could hear Bruce's voice behind the door even without focusing.  The voice drew nearer and the door swung open to reveal Bruce Wayne in a sweatshirt and jeans, hair still damp and tousled, talking on a cell phone and looking annoyed at the interruption.  He jerked his head at Clark to indicate he should come in, still talking. 

"--tell him math isn't just theoretical, he's going to need it someday.  There's more to this than just tumbling around.  Yes Alfred, he does seem to have that part down.  The chandelier?"  Bruce grimaced to himself and sighed.  "As long as he does his math homework, he can balance anywhere he wants.  You can tell him that if he ever decides to come out of his sulk.  Yes, I know, Alfred.  Would you tell him I miss him too?  Maybe he'll talk to me tomorrow."  He flipped the phone shut and tossed it onto the bed.  Then he saw the expression on Clark's face and his own went wary and cautious.  "What is it, Clark?"

"That boy you've taken in.  You're not--Bruce, tell me he's not the 'partner' you talked about!"

Bruce said nothing for a moment, staring at the phone on the bed.  Then he squared his shoulders and looked back at Clark.  "His name's Dick, not 'that boy.'  And I'm training him.  Yes."

"You can't be partners with a child."  Clark was aghast.

He expected Bruce to argue that the boy wasn't a child, but the other man just set his jaw.  "Oh?  Watch me."  He snatched up a towel and scrubbed at his hair.  "I'm not going to waste my breath on this trip justifying myself to you.  This conversation is closed."  He emerged from the towel, still scowling, and spoke as Clark opened his mouth again.  "Closed, Clark."  He raked his hand through his damp black hair.  "You ready to go?"

Clark took in the sweatshirt and rumpled hair.  "Like that?"

Bruce shot him a sidelong glance as he threw on a coat.  "Matsunaga's not a man to be impressed by a playboy.  I'm meeting him to find out what he meant when he emailed me about Kyodai, not dazzle him with my good looks."

Clark decided to let that one pass.  "So where are we meeting him?"  Visions of hushed teahouses or mysterious temples flitted before Clark.

His companion shot him a wolfish grin.  "Someplace very Japanese."

* * *

Clark stared disbelievingly at the neon golden arches above his head.  "We're meeting your friend at McDonald's?"  

Bruce pushed his way into the bustling store, full of kids in school uniforms stopping for a quick meal after cram school, chattering on their cell phones.  "All the chaos makes it less likely we'll be noticed at all."  He stepped up to the counter and ordered a Big Mac in fluent Japanese.  Clark came up after him and the server behind the counter looked panicked, probably wondering how he was going to communicate with the hulking foreigner, then gave up and spoke in Japanese.  "Koko ni omeshiagari deshouka?"

Bruce looked like he was about to translate, but Clark cut him off.  "Tennai deebi katsu sando, furaido poteto, to koora, eru-saizu."  The server nodded appreciatively and bustled off.

As they took their seats, Clark noticed his companion was glowering.  "What have I done now?" he asked, not bothering to hide his frustation.

"When the hell did you learn Japanese?"

Clark nibbled tentatively on his shrimp cutlet sandwich before answering.  "When I found out we were coming here, I took a few days and learned the basics.  I have to admit I don't have the honorific and humble forms down yet, but I brought a textbook and hope to have them ready before we meet your sensei."

Bruce glared, then spoke rapidly in Japanese.  < Do not sit there and tell me you learned a language in four days. >

< What?  I read fast and have a good memory.  It seemed practical.  Why are you angry at me about it? >

Bruce's expression hovered somewhere between furious and oddly downcast.  "You know what?  I hate you," he muttered glumly.  An awkward silence fell across the table, filled with the sounds of giggling schoolgirls and young boys pummeling each other teasingly at their own tables.  Clark continued to eat his sandwich, eyeing Bruce over the bun.  The other man was studying his brightly-colored placemat intently, as though it might explain why his contact was running late, or why he hated Clark Kent so much.  His hair, still slightly damp, obscured his eyes, and neon from the busy street added flourescent highlights to its dark sheen.

"Who are you?"  Clark blurted without thinking, then wished he hadn't when Bruce's head came up as though he'd been challenged. 

Bruce visibly relaxed into an overly toothy grin and said, "Bruce Wayne, billionare playboy and your extremely reluctant travelling companion?"

Clark shook his head and barged ahead.  "No.  I've met billionaire Bruce Wayne, on the cruise, and he's an insufferable snob and asshole who wouldn't be caught dead eating at a McDonald's with a kid from Kansas.  Who are you?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes in annoyance and dropped his voice to almost comedic levels of gravel.  "I'm--"

Clark cut him off, jabbing a french fry at him.  "No.  Who are you, the guy who's so irritated that I learned in four days what took him a lot of effort, the guy who thinks I didn't deserve that.  The man who's angry that I don't have to depend on him during this trip."  He hadn't realized the last sentence was true until he said it and saw Bruce's eyes flicker. 

Bruce turned his head and stared out the window at the sidewalk teeming with humanity, washing to and fro.  Clark waited, but when Bruce turned back to him, all he said was, "Matsunaga's almost thirty minutes late now.  He was one of the most punctual students Yoru-sensei had--and we were all punctual."  He finished his burger, clearly on edge and suddenly all business.  Then he stood up.  "I'm worried."

Clark followed him to the trash can, bemused to find it had three different openings.  Around him other customers were sorting and dropping items into the bin with the ease of long practice.  He glanced at the labels:  plastic, burnable items, and ice and leftover drinks.  Carefully he started to extricate the plastic wrappers.  Beside him, Bruce sighed gustily.  "You can read Japanese characters too.  Of course you can.  May I ask how many characters you learned in four days?"

Clark fumbled with the little wet-nap package he had been given, trying to separate the napkin from its plastic wrapper.  This was all quite complicated.  "Oh, only about fifteen hundred," he said absent-mindedly.

A hand reached past him, scooped up his cup and emptied the ice into the proper entrance with a vicious rattle.  "Go to hell," Bruce suggested amiably.

* * *

Superman and Batman were breaking into an apartment.  They had--at Superman's insistence--knocked first, but nobody had answered Matsunaga's door.  Batman finished picking the lock and they stepped into the cramped apartment.  Documents scattered the floor, and a coffee table was overturned:  signs of a struggle.  "Damn," Batman said very softly under his breath, and started searching the apartment.

  
They found the body garrotted in the bathroom, the face livid.  Batman showed no reaction, dusting for fingerprints--finding none, of course--and examining the bathroom minutely.  Superman stood outside the room, watching.  The dead man's glassy eyes seemed to stare at the expressionless dark figure.  Had he been a friend of Bruce Wayne's?  There was no telling from the vigilante's businesslike mein.  
  
Superman wondered suddenly what it would be like to be twelve years old, that boy's age, and deal with crime scenes like this almost every night.  When he was twelve, Clark had been mostly worried about whether the Kansas City Royals would win their next game.  He couldn't even imagine dealing with gruesome murder and gore at that age.   
  
The kid couldn't possibly understand what working with Batman would lead him into.  
  
Batman left the bathroom and went to the living room, strewn with documents and newspapers.  He stood for a moment, then said rather reluctantly, "I don't suppose you can use your x-ray vision to scan these documents?"  
  
"Sure.  What am I looking for?"  
  
Batman sighed and rubbed his chin.  "That's the problem, I'm not sure.  But I'm not sure I have time to go through them all, either.  Look for any themes that seem to recur."  
  
A moment's pause.  "A place called Hakone keeps showing up.  Travel fliers, brief references in newspaper stories...there's no real pattern to it, but it's referenced more often than could probably be explained by chance."  
  
"Hm."  
  
If he had been waiting for thanks, he was apparently waiting in vain.  "You don't seem so irritable about speed-reading ability now," he noted somewhat smugly.  
  
Batman shot him a glance.  "Can you really retain all that?"  
  
"Not without review," Clark was forced to admit.  "If I don't go over it a few times to commit it to long-term memory it's gone again in a few minutes.  But Hakone--there were definitely a lot of references to Hakone."  
  
"That's a resort area near here.  I wonder--" There was a pounding on the door.   
  
< Police! Open up! >   
  
Batman went to the window and threw it open;  the cool winter air wafted in.  "That's our cue to leave."  
  
Superman drifted out the window and watched Batman plummet fifteen stories before releasing his decel line and swooping between the Tokyo skyscrapers, cape fluttering.  Deciding not to follow him, Clark went back to the hotel room and sat on the edge of the hotel bed some more, looking at the lights of the city like a million stars below him.  After a while there was a knock on the door.  
  
The door opened to Bruce Wayne's face.  "Be ready to go tomorrow," he said shortly.  
  
Clark put his arm out to stop the door as it started to swing shut.  "Are you going to tell me where exactly we're going?  Some tour guide you are."  
  
The door snapped open again.  "I'm not your damn tour guide, Kent, and this isn't a vacation.  Yoru-sensei has invited us to his home for New Year's.  It's quite an honor."  
  
"I'll make sure I can use the honorific forms properly by tomorrow, then."  
  
Bruce Wayne made an indescribable noise, and the door slammed shut in Clark's face.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Year's Eve at the Yoru dojo--Japanese food, painted tigers, and the moon.

  
_The moon is full_  
_The night is very still_  
_My heart beats_  
_Like a bell._  
_\--Anonymous_  
  
Clark Kent shouldered his backpack and glanced at the man standing beside him as the bus rattled away. In front of them a narrow road snaked up the side of a mountain. "Up there?"  
  
Bruce Wayne nodded, a small smile on his face as he gazed up the road. "I could find it in my sleep. Spent a lot of time running up and down the side of this mountain." He started upward and Clark followed, feeling the crisp air on his face, heavy with the scent of pines and cedars all around them.  
  
At the top of the hill they turned off the road and passed under a series of torii gates made of wood silvered by age. The path eventually opened out into a courtyard ringed with old Japanese buildings, their sloping tile roofs gleaming in the weak afternoon sun.  
  
"Wayne- _san_!" A clear high voice called out, and a young woman in jeans and a t-shirt burst from one of the buildings and pelted across the courtyard toward the pair. She looked about fifteen, her glossy black hair pulled back into a ponytail. When she neared Bruce she skidded to a stop on the gravel and bowed deeply, seemingly overcome by bashfulness. Bruce bowed back to her gravely and Clark bobbed in what he hoped wasn't too awkward a motion. Then the girl glanced up at Bruce, her eyes sparkling, and threw herself at him in a hug.  < Wayne- _san,_ it's been too long. >  
  
Bruce put his hands on the girl's shoulders as she drew back and held them gently, looking at her. < Tokiko- _chan_ , you've grown up! It's been, what? Four years now? >  
  
She dimpled. < Five and a half, actually. Not that I've been keeping track. >  
  
Bruce ruffled her dark bangs. < Of course not. >  
  
Tokiko beamed at him. < Yoru- _sensei_ picked me to see you and your companion to your room.  > She looked past Bruce to Clark, suddenly shy again, her eyes dropping.  
  
< This is a colleague of mine, Clark Kent. He's a reporter for the Metropolis Daily Planet. >  
  
The girl bowed gracefully. "I'm happy to meet you, sir," she said in decent English.  
  
Clark bowed back. < I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. > Her eyes shone at his use of Japanese, but she said nothing more to him, chattering instead to Bruce as they walked toward one of the wings of the little compound. Most of what she was talking about seemed to be a running recap of the last five years: marriages, deaths, and promotions. Clark soon lost track of all the different names, but Bruce seemed sincerely interested, nodding and asking questions.  
  
They stepped indoors, taking off their shoes and changing into slippers, and made their way through a narrow hallway. The slippers were far too small for Clark's feet and reduced his gait to something like a waddle. Bruce, of course, slipped gracefully along the gleaming wooden floors. Clark felt an embarrassingly strong desire to lift off the ground just enough to glide as elegantly as Bruce, but squelched the impulse.  
  
Eventually Tokiko brought them to a sliding door, opening it and gesturing inside. Bruce removed his slippers and Clark followed suit, leaving them outside. As the two men entered the room, the girl went gracefully to her knees and put her forearms on the floor in a deep, formal obeisance, her dark hair spilling on the floor. Appalled, Clark stammered, < Don't--don't do that! Please! No! > which caused her to glance up at him with dancing eyes.  
  
< He's _cute!_ > she said laughingly to Bruce, then leapt up and pelted down the hallway.  
  
"She and her sister, Kaori, were adopted by Yoru- _sensei_ as very small children," Bruce explained at Clark's questioning look. "They were orphans. They're like daughters to him." He smiled slightly. "Tokiko was just a little girl when I was here training."  
  
Clark looked around the room. It was nearly bare of decoration beyond the flowing drawings on the paper walls: tigers undulating between bamboo stalks and cranes spreading their wings in the mist. In a far corner, two small, swift brush strokes stood in for Mt. Fuji. The floor was of straw matting, smooth and springy beneath his feet. In a tiny nook, a calligraphy scroll hung over a vase holding a twig laden with small red berries. "So where's my room?"  
  
"This is our room, Clark."  
  
"I don't get my own?" Clark tried to hide his dismay at being forced to share a room with Bruce Wayne. What if the playboy snored?  
  
Bruce was studying the wall paintings. "Generally it's presumed that if people of the same sex are travelling together, they'll share a room in traditional lodgings. A room like this could accommodate ten or so people if necessary." He shot Clark a sardonic look. "Don't worry, Kent, no one's assuming we're lovers."  
  
Clark sputtered, recovered himself. "I didn't think they were! I just like my own room."  
  
"It would be the height of rudeness to insist on separate rooms, when Yoru- _sensei_ has been so kind to have us as guests." Bruce went to the one piece of furniture, a low coffee table, and filled a teapot with hot water from a sort of electric thermos. He settled down on the floor with his legs crossed, gesturing to Clark to sit down as well. "The cruise, this trip--I'm afraid it is our cruel fate to be stuck with each other." He poured green tea into two teacups and placed one cup next to Clark with a small package of sweets.  
  
As Clark sipped his tea and nibbled on the sweet, which had red bean paste in the center, Bruce looked around the room. "This was my old room," he said softly.  "I remember the tigers on the walls. When I--was up late at night, sometimes, I'd tell myself that the tigers were keeping an eye on me." He uttered a small half-laugh and took a mouthful of tea.  
  
Clark tried to imagine any form of Bruce Wayne needing reassurance from painted tigers and failed. "It's beautiful here. And so quiet."  
  
Bruce nodded absent-mindedly, his thoughts clearly somewhere else. They sat in silence for a while, until there was a polite knock on the door and Tokiko's voice said, < Excuse me. >  
  
The door slid open to reveal Tokiko and an older girl--young woman, actually--holding trays of food. Bruce jumped to his feet, Clark following after, and bowed. The older woman's hair was cut shorter than Tokiko's, but there was a definite family resemblance. < Kaori- _san_ , > said Bruce affectionately, < It's good to see you again. >  
  
Kaori smiled at Bruce, more reserved than her sister but still clearly pleased to see Bruce. < Wayne- _san._ It is an honor to have you back.  > Her dark eyes turned to Clark. < And this is the reporter from Metropolis that my sister declares 'cute'? >  
  
Clark bowed politely, feeling himself blush. < Thank you for having us. >  
  
The two women moved into the room with their trays, Tokiko giving Clark an impish grin as she placed his tray on the table. At the doorway, Kaori turned again. < Yoru- _sensei_ will be by soon to bid you welcome. He says he will talk with you in more detail tomorrow.  > Another bow and she was gone.  
  
Clark turned his attention to the tray, which had a bewildering assortment of tiny plates on it. Things that looked like slices of roots, tiny purple flower-like things--well, that thing was definitely tofu, at least. He picked up his chopsticks and began to dissect the tofu.  
  
Across the table from him, Bruce raised his eyebrows. "You know how to use chopsticks? Impressive."  
  
Clark gave the other man a withering glance. "They do have Chinese restaurants in Kansas, you know." Condescending bastard. He finished the tofu and nudged something that looked like a piece of gelatin with little squiggles in it. "What's this?"  
  
Bruce popped the wobbly bit of food in his mouth and chewed, considering. "It's delicious," he declared.  
  
"I just like to know what I'm eating," Clark grumbled. He tried one of the purple things and found it crunchy and sour. Not bad. "Why don't we get to eat with Yoru- _sensei_ and his family? Are they afraid of _gaijin_ contamination?"  
  
Bruce looked rather offended on his teacher's behalf. "Hardly. But it's New Year's Eve, and in Japan that means you spend it with your family, the people you're closest to."  
  
"And you're stuck with me."  
  
"And we're stuck with each other, yes." Bruce continued to eat, his look somewhere between glaring and musing.  
  
As Clark finished up his rice, there was another tap at the door. At Bruce's  < Come in, > an elderly Japanese man entered the room. Unlike Tokiko and Kaori, he was wearing traditional Japanese clothing. His face was lined and weathered, a white goatee and mustache framing a mouth that curved serenely. Power and stillness simultaneously rested in the lines of his body, a grace beyond that of the physical.  
  
Clark felt a shock of something like recognition when he realized he had seen that same coiled balance in both Batman and Bruce Wayne at times.  
  
Yoru- _sensei_ bowed, and both Bruce and Clark rose quickly to bow deeply before the master.  < Welcome to my humble home, > Yoru said quietly. < Wayne- _san_ , welcome back. >  
  
Bruce lifted his eyes to his old master. < I'm honored by your hospitality, _sensei_.  > He gestured toward his companion. < This is Clark Kent, an...acquaintance of mine. He works as a reporter in Metropolis. > Clark bowed nervously.  
  
"Mr. Kent," Yoru said in English. "Yes. I read your story recently about Intergang's influence abroad. Very interesting."  
  
Clark blinked. "Thank you, sir. I'm honored."  
  
Yoru nodded gravely and turned back to Bruce. < We shall discuss what you wrote me about in greater length tomorrow, Wayne- _san_. For now, please take this evening to recover from your jet lag and rest. The bath is ready whenever you like. You remember where it is.  > A faint smile made it clear giving Bruce his old room had not been a coincidence. He switched back into English to address the two of them. "Please, feel at home."  
  
Bruce didn't smile, but his voice was warm as he bowed. "I always do, _sensei._ "  
  
After the door closed behind his teacher, Bruce opened one of the sliding doors in the wall to reveal a closet stacked with bedding. He pulled down a couple of futons, blankets, and pillows, and arranged them on the floor, a decent distance from each other. Then he pulled out a cotton robe, white with blue markings on it, and began unselfconsciously to strip in a corner of the room.  
  
"Now Clark, don't embarrass me by having bad bath etiquette." He spoke without looking at Clark, stripping off his sweater and turtleneck. "You wash _before_ you enter the bath. No soap in the bath. Rinse yourself really well." Clark saw a long silvery scar that trailed down Bruce's back. He found himself wondering just how many scars a man like Bruce Wayne would end up with before his death. Bruce started to take off his pants and Clark quickly began to study the tigers and cranes dancing across the walls. "And don't drain the bath when you're done, other members of the family may be using it." The door slid open and Clark looked to see Bruce in a light cotton robe cut almost like a kimono, standing in the doorway. "I'll go first and give you some privacy to change," Bruce said, with a hint of a sardonic smile. Clark wondered if his discomfort had shown that clearly.  
  
The door slid shut. Clark took the opportunity to change into the light robe, but discovered that what Bruce wore with grace merely made him look like a very...big...foreign guy. He was still fiddling at the belt with annoyance when Bruce came back.  
  
Bruce snorted with laughter at the sight of Clark with his belt twisted and the edges of the robe askew. Clark scowled. "How the hell should I know how to wear a kimono?"  
  
"It's not a kimono, Clark. It's a yukata, and it's a _lot_ simpler to wear than a kimono." Bruce smiled slightly as if at a private joke. He reached out and adjusted the edges of Clark's robe, evening them out, then straightened the belt until it lay smooth. "There you go. You're ready for public consumption again, _gaijin."_ He gestured. "The bath is on the left, down the hall."  
  
Clark crammed his fat foreign feet into the tiny slippers and waddled down the hall, fuming--whether at Bruce's condescension or his own ineptitude, he wasn't sure.  
  


* * *

  
Bruce took advantage of Clark's absence to call home again. Dick had come out of his sulk tonight, and chattered cheerfully about how Alfred was going to let him stay up until midnight tonight. He was a mercurial child, swinging between gloom and happiness in a way Bruce never had at that age.  
  
As Dick talked, Bruce watched the tigers on the walls. He remembered each of them like old friends; he had even given them names during the long nights. His eyes were drawn to the two who seemed to be frolicking, wrestling together like friends or lovers, one's paw thrown over the other's back, the playfully pinned tiger chewing gently on the ear of his companion. Toshio and Kouhei, he had named them. He reached out and ran a finger lightly down Toshio's striped back, over Kouhei's flanks.  
  
Dick was still explaining something interesting he had learned in school today--and how Kelly had tried to kiss him--when the door slid open again and Clark started to enter the room. "Take off your slippers!" Bruce hissed at him as he stepped in. "No slippers on tatami!" Clark glowered and removed the slippers.  
  
Dick's voice on the phone went up about an octave. "You said you'd be working with Superman while you were there...is that--is that _him?"_  
  
Bruce eyed the uncomfortable-looking man who had managed to get his sash twisted around again. "I suppose so, yes."  
  
"Can I..." Dick cleared his throat and dropped his voice a little. "May I talk with him?"  
  
"Superman? You want to say hello to my ward, Richard Grayson?" Bruce held out the phone toward Clark, who picked it up as if handling an adder.  
  
"Hello, is this Richard?" Bruce could make out Dick's excited voice on the other end, all pretense at sober adulthood dropped instantly. As Bruce watched, Clark threw back his shoulders and took a breath--and was Superman. Superman in a ridiculously twisted yukata, but still Superman. "I'm pleased to talk to you too, Richard," Superman said. Not Clark. Superman. Bruce felt his eyebrows rising. He wondered if Clark was even aware of the change. He didn't seem particularly to be.  
  
Superman was listening to Dick's excited chatter, not getting many words in edgewise, but clearly listening. Listening more closely than Bruce had been, Bruce thought with a sudden pang of guilt.  
  
"You know, Richard," Superman was explaining, "This could be a dangerous trip, and Bruce wants to make sure you're well-trained before--" Dick's distant voice cut him off. "--No, no, I'm sure it's not that he doesn't think you're good enough, or brave enough. Yes, I'm sure you're brave enough too." A complicated look crossed Clark's face, moving through frustration and sadness into something close to a smile. "I'm sure he knows what he's doing, Richard. No, I don't think that would be appropriate. He's a...very strong-willed man, and if he said you're not to come, I sincerely doubt anything I could say will change his mind." He shot Bruce a look; Bruce looked back blandly. "I'm sorry," Superman said softly to the boy on the other side of the world. His eyebrows shot upwards suddenly and his look at Bruce became mischievous. "Why thank you, Richard, I'd love to come by for dinner sometime. Yes, I'll consider that an official invitation," he added hastily as Bruce made a big production of jostling the phone away from him.  
  
"All right, Dick," Bruce said, glaring sternly at the snickering Clark, "You've gotten Superman invited to the Manor, are you happy?"  
  
A long silence on the other end. "Dick?"  
  
Something suspiciously close to a sniffle. "I wanted to be with you when the new year started. So we could start it together."  
  
Bruce sank down onto the tatami floor, leaning his back up against Kouhei's painted belly. "I'm sorry, Dick. One of the things you're going to have to learn is that my job, this life--it means you can't always be where you'd like to be." No response. "I wish I were with you too. I'll be home soon. Okay?" Definite sniffling on the other side of the line now, and Bruce was acutely conscious of Clark's direct blue eyes on him, watching him make his ward cry.   
  
The sniffling resolved into a teary voice. "Okay. I love you, Bruce."  
  
As always, Bruce forced himself not to hesitate, not to consider the hideous implications of what he was about to say. "I love you too, kiddo."  
  
He hung up the phone and shrugged uncomfortably at Clark, who was just looking at him. No recrimination in those eyes, and yet Bruce felt...recriminated. He went to the paper blinds at the far side of the room and pushed them open to reveal a glassed-in veranda with two chairs and a small table. Outside, the moon drifted above the sloping shoulder of the mountain, dark with pine trees. "Don't you have someone to call, check in with?" he asked, looking out at the moon.   
  
When Clark didn't answer, he glanced back at the other man just in time to catch the tail end of an expression that Bruce would have called "woebegone" if it hadn't been on the face of the most powerful being on the planet. Clark dropped into the other chair, his features _nondescript_ again. "Not really, no. No one like you do. I mean, I'm sure my parents would like to hear my voice, but they know I'm okay, and on a reporter's salary...I can't afford to call them from Japan and just chat."  
  
Bruce took out his international cell phone and slid it across the table. "Check in with your folks, Kent."  
  
Clark stared at the phone. "I couldn't--"  
  
"It's only money. Call your family. Wish them a Happy New Year."  
  
Clark reached out gingerly and rested his hand on the phone. "Thank you," he said softly.  
  
Of course, that meant Bruce had to put up with fifteen minutes of listening to Clark explain to his folks the mysterious intricacies of waste disposal and recycling in Japan, but the look on the guy's face when his mother picked up on the other end made it--well, maybe not _worth it_ , but rather satisfying. It never hurt to have a Kryptonian consider himself in your debt, after all: a sheerly pragmatic decision.  
  
After Clark hung up, Bruce poured him some more of the light green tea and they sipped for a moment in silence. Outside, the moon lifted itself slowly above the mountain. The air was cool and crisp.  
  
Keeping his eyes on the moon, Bruce said, "When you were twelve, did you know you wanted to do something great with your life, Clark?"  
  
A slurping noise, which Bruce didn't look toward. Clark swallowed tea. "When I was twelve, I didn't have any powers." Bruce made a mental note of that: he had scoured the Smallville newspapers and records of that time and found no sign of a super-powered kid flying around, but that didn't mean much. It made a huge difference in Superman's personality whether he had grown up with powers or without. Bruce was relieved to hear it was the latter. "I knew I wasn't from Earth, but I didn't know just how...different...I was going to be."  
  
"That's not what I'm asking. Did you want to do great things?"  
  
"I...suppose so. Mostly I wanted to become an astronomer and find out where I came from, maybe be the first person to contact another civilization. I never really planned on flying around and saving people."  
  
"But once you knew you had the powers, you didn't consider just hiding them and living a normal life?"  
  
"What?" Clark sounded honestly surprised. "How could I do that?"  
  
Bruce looked down at his teacup, then back up at the moon. "This kid, Clark. He's like us. He's going to help people, and he's going to start as soon as he can. I can't shackle him in a closet. I _can_ train him. Try to stall him as long as possible. Make sure he's got the skills, the...wisdom...to stay alive."  
  
Clark snorted gently. "Only Batman could have stalled him _this_ long, I suspect. He...seems special."  
  
Bruce felt himself smile. "He is."  
  
Clark cleared his throat. "I wasn't anything like the two of you at that age. I was really just an ordinary kid. Nothing special."  
  
Bruce looked at Clark, his face in shadows, touched with silver, a chiaroscuro. "I don't believe that."  
  
The statement seemed to hang in the silvery silence between them for longer than Bruce liked, but before he could make a safe, sarcastic addition, a new sound reached their ears. Distant and deep, a bell was ringing somewhere far away, echoing off the mountains around them.  
  
"What's that for?" Clark's voice was hushed.  
  
"It's a temple bell. They start ringing them at midnight." Bruce glanced at his watch. "It's a new year."  
  
Clark smiled at him and lifted his teacup in a toast. "Happy New Year, Bruce."  
  
Bruce didn't return the smile. "We're going to the local temple with Yoru _-sensei_ tomorrow. We should probably turn in and get some sleep." Bruce started to push his chair back.  
  
Clark continued to hold up his teacup, waiting, his smile unwavering. _Stubborn oaf._ Grudgingly, Bruce touched his cup to Clark's. A tiny clink of china on china.  
  
"Happy New Year, Clark."  


* * *

Toshio (実雄): The character for "Truth" combined with the character meaning "Hero, Manliness, Magnificence"  
Kouhei (公平): "Justice"


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark and Bruce go to a temple for New Year's and attend a tea ceremony in an attempt to gather information about whether Kyodai Ken is alive and behind the mystery they're investigating.

_The troubled waters_  
_Are frozen fast._  
_Under clear heaven_  
_Moonlight and shadow_  
_Ebb and flow._  
_\--Murasaki Shikibu_  
  
"Go 'way," Clark Kent muttered and pulled the blankets over his head.  Bruce Wayne glared down at his cocooned form on the tatami floor, then launched a buckwheat-filled pillow at his head.  It connected with a satisfying _thump_ , and Clark grunted irritably.  
  
"I thought farm boys rose with the sun," Bruce observed as Clark emerged from under the blankets, blinking.   
  
"Sure, when there's _sun to rise with_.  What time is it, anyway?"  
  
"Five o'clock.  We're heading to the local temple soon for _hatsumode_ , the first visit of the new year."  Bruce dropped a pile of gray and black material on Clark's lap.  
  
"What's this?"  Clark stared down at the heap of glossy, elegant raw silk, then up at Bruce with an oddly dismayed expression.   
  
Bruce grinned.  "Formal kimono.  Yoru- _sensei_ strongly suggests we wear them to go with his family.  Which means it's required."  He turned his back on Kent to give him a modicum of privacy, slipping into the white under-robes, pulling on the white split-toed socks, and donning the wide, pleated gray silk _hakama_ and black jacket.  Then he heard a thumping noise and a muffled curse behind him.  He turned around to see Clark struggling to put on one of the socks.  The robes were on all wrong, rumpled and in disarray, the _hakama_ hiked up until the hems were at Clark's calves.  He looked totally ridiculous, and at the sight of Superman playing the idiot, _yet again,_ Bruce felt irritation boil over in him.   
  
Kent stopped hopping and stood there, one sock still only half-on, staring at Bruce's outraged expression.  "What?" he asked blankly.  
  
Bruce stalked across the straw matting right up to Clark.  Clark fell back before him until his back came up against the sliding walls.  _"Stop it,"_ Bruce hissed, getting in Clark's face, almost relieved to be saying it at last.  "Just...cut it out with the moron act when we're in private, all right?  It's _insulting_ that you're pretending you can't figure out how to _wear clothes."_   Clark's jaw was slack in shock;  there was a touch of hurt in his eyes that somehow just made Bruce angrier.  "And you can drop the whole 'cutely flustered' routine around people here too.  _No one_ is that socially inept, all right?  It's completely unrealistic."  
  
Somehow he had expected either disingenuousness or laughter, but not anger;  Clark reached out and pushed Bruce away just hard enough to send him staggering a couple of reluctant steps backward.  The calculating part of Bruce's mind was impressed at the fine control, but most of him continued to be mystified by the expression on Clark's face, half fury and half...something else.   
  
Clark bunched his hands in the black silk of his kimono and shook it as if he was brandishing himself at Bruce.  "You think this is all an _act_?" he said disbelievingly.  He held out his fists.  Bruce tried not to notice they were shaking slightly.  "What the hell does being able to punch things really hard have to do with knowing how to wear a kimono?  What exactly is the connection between invulnerability and knowing Japanese bath etiquette?"  The fists dropped to his sides.  "And what precisely does being able to learn a language quickly have to do with being _comfortable_ with talking to people and being able to connect with them?  Tell me that, Bruce!"  Clark shook his head.  "Just because I'm not as--as--" he groped for words, growing visibly more irritated with his inability to express it, "--as good around people as you, as charming as you, that doesn't make it an act.  I'm just not very...likable," he finished, somewhat lamely.  
  
Bruce struggled to keep from breaking into outright laughter.  _Charming?_   "You've got to be kidding me," he snarled back, the suppressed laughter adding an odd edge to his voice, "I've seen Superman in action, I've seen how people look up at you in the sky, the looks on their faces, and you say you're not _likable?_   Everybody loves Superman."  
  
Clark was staring down at the foot with the sock half-on and half-off.  He ran a toe along the edge of the tatami mat and spoke without looking up.  "That's worship.  That's not liking."  He reached down and tugged the sock on more firmly, crumpling his clothes up more in the process.  "And it's sure as hell not love," he added very softly.   
  
For a long moment, Bruce couldn't seem to think of anything to say, which was very unusual.  Clark cleared his throat, then looked up with the air of a man trying to lighten the mood, deflect attention away from himself.  "I mean, I saw the way you had that stewardess on the flight wrapped around your little finger.  She was half-hoping you'd invite her to induct you into the Mile-High Club in the lavatory."  
  
This time Bruce looked away.  "That's not love either," he muttered.  
  
Thankfully, at that moment a gentle knock on the door interrupted the increasingly uncomfortable conversation.  The door slid open and Tokiko came in, dressed in a pastel kimono, looking like an entirely different girl than the jeans-wearing teenager of yesterday.  At the sight of Clark, her hand flew to her mouth to stifle laughter, but her giggles eventually won out over her decorum.  Clark turned bright red and she hurried forward and started adjusting his kimono for him.  "Don't mind, Mister Kent, I'll help you," she said, still giggling slightly.  
  
"Thank you," Clark mumbled indistinctly, staring down at the straw matting like it was extremely interesting.  Bruce watched the man blush as the attractive Japanese girl fussed over him, straightening his clothing deftly.  
  
_Not very likable._  
  
_Right._

* * *

  
"So when do we get to talk about this business with Yoru- _sensei_?  Will he be able to tell us if Kyodai Ken survived your last encounter with him, if he's seen any sign of the ninja?" Clark whispered as he and Bruce trailed after the teacher and his flock of students and friends.  
  
"You need to give it time, Kent," Bruce whispered back.  "You can't rush these things."  
  
Clark sighed as Bruce tucked his hands into his sleeves and looked inscrutable.  Just how did the man manage to walk so gracefully in these sandal-things?  Clark clomped sullenly along beside him.  
  
The temple courtyard was crowded, although not oppressively so.  In the center of the courtyard a huge incense-burner, chest-high, emitted wisps of sweetly scented smoke.  Children in kimono and Western clothes chased cooing pigeons around while their parents took videos with their cell phones.  
  
Tokiko handed Kaori her cell phone and darted over to squeeze in between Clark and Bruce.   < Take a picture of us, sister! >  Kaori smiled and held up the phone.  Tokiko looked over and grabbed Clark's hand, frowning.  "Peace!" she exclaimed, holding up his hand and showing him her hand, two fingers extended in a "V."   
  
"Um...peace?"  
  
"It's practically required when having your photo taken here, Clark," Bruce said dryly.   
  
"Even when wearing formal kimono?"  
  
"Even more so."  Bruce made the peace sign and flashed him an utterly insincere smile.  Clark gamely held up his hand as well.  
  
The cell phone clicked.  "Thank you!" exclaimed Tokiko, then darted off again.  
  
Clark looked around and felt panic grip him.  He was going to do something incredibly stupid and rude and foreign, he just knew it.  He grabbed Bruce's sleeve.  "What do I do?" he hissed.  
  
Bruce pulled his sleeve away.  "Just do exactly what I do."  
  
Well, at least this way Bruce couldn't make him look like an idiot without being one himself.  Clark trailed along behind Bruce as he followed Yoru up the stairs to the temple interior and watched carefully as Bruce, his teacher, and the girls all tossed a coin into a box, pulled a rope to clang some kind of bell, clapped their hands twice and bowed their heads a moment.  Clark followed and tried to imitate their movements as best he could.  At the end he was sweating more than when he had fought Ultraman, but Kaori gave him a slight smile and a nod and he relaxed a little.  
  
Tokiko grabbed their two sleeves and dragged them to a stall where various charms were being sold.  _"Omikuji,"_ she explained. She handed the vendor some money, grabbed a black lacquered box with a tiny hole in the top, and shook it at Clark with a rattling noise.  Clark stared at her blankly.  One of the readings he had memorized for the characters of _"omikuji"_ was "honorable god lottery," but what the heck...  
  
"It's your New Year's fortune, Clark, " Bruce explained, nudging his hand.  "Pick a stick at random and they'll give you a fortune."  
  
"Oh."  Clark reached out and grabbed the thin wooden dowel protruding from the box;  Tokiko shook the box imperiously at Bruce and he took one as well.  The vendor handed them each a slip of paper.  It was divided up into categories with predictions on how the next year would go.  Clark's was quite good--his love life specifically was foretold to be excellent, albeit after a slow start.  He glanced over at Bruce's and saw his was also very good.  
  
Tokiko, on the other hand, read hers with a downcast face.  "No good, no good," she sighed.  Then she flashed a grin at Clark, folded her fortune into a thin strip and went over to a pine tree growing near the temple.  It was bent under the weight of slips of paper tied around its branches.  "Bad thing tie here," she explained, before fumbling for words and then slipping into Japanese with an annoyed grimace.   < If your fortune is bad, you can tie it here to ward off bad luck.  If it's good, we usually take it home. >  
  
To Clark's surprise, Bruce stepped forward and tied his slip of paper to it.  Tokiko shot him an ironic glance, but said nothing, slipping off to rejoin the sensei.   
  
"Why'd you do that, Bruce?  I saw your fortune, it was a really good one."  
  
"I don't believe in superstitions, Clark.  I always make a point of tying good fortunes up as well.  I don't need a god looking out for me."  
  
Clark snorted.  "That sounds just as superstitious to me."  Bruce gifted him with a black look and stalked off.  Clark followed after a moment, falling in behind Bruce and the Yoru household as they made their way through the courtyard.  The incense wafted around them and pigeons scattered as they passed by.  Clark looked at Bruce, walking between Tokiko and another young student and talking easily with them, the silk shifting gracefully with his body's movements.   
  
Clark slipped his hand into the pocket of his black jacket and felt the two slips of paper hidden there, twining around his fingers and each other.  He wasn't superstitious either, but why take chances?  Someone like Bruce was going to need all the good fortune he could get, after all.

* * *

  
Clark and Bruce made their way across a path of smooth, round stepping stones toward a little house built off in the garden.  The garden was apparently dead for the winter, but bushes of red berries and evergreens kept it from looking lifeless.  As he walked, Clark went over Bruce's instructions in his head on how to get through a Japanese tea ceremony.  The instructions were fairly complicated, but in the end boiled down basically to "Do what I do and keep your mouth shut as much as possible."  
  
The door to the interior of the teahouse was only half the height of a man, which gave Clark pause.  As he hesitated, Bruce's dark head poked back out.  "It's to force all people to bow and humble themselves as they enter, Clark, I would think you could appreciate that.  Now get in here."  
  
It wasn't the humbling himself so much as the worry that he wouldn't fit through the damn door at all, but Clark decided not to mention that to Bruce and scrambled through.  
  
The inside was austerely simple:  tatami mats, a low table, no other decoration besides a scroll hanging in a niche above a bowl of flowers.  Yoru- _sensei_ took a variety of utensils from a lacquered box and arranged them on the table as Clark and Bruce sat down on the mat on the other side.  Clark tucked his legs under him, sitting on the heels in the correct formal posture, and waited.  Without speaking, Bruce's teacher went through the graceful process of the ceremony, whisking enamel-bright green tea into a black ceramic bowl.  The bowl was surprisingly unattractive, awkwardly shaped and asymmetrical, the dull matte glaze uneven.  Bruce lifted it as if he were handling something priceless, however, drank, then passed the bowl to Clark.  Clark tried to replicate his actions as closely as possible, drinking the thick, bitter tea and eating the small sweet Yoru had placed next to it.  The teacher gestured to Bruce and Bruce gently lifted and examined the utensils, setting them back down with infinite care on the cloth-covered table.  
  
The trio sat in silence for some time, far past when Clark felt comfortable.  He followed Bruce's gaze to the niche with its scroll and flowers.  The scroll was of a cicada, clinging to a branch under the moon.  The black bowl under it was filled with waxy magnolia-like flowers.  The other two men seemed to be contemplating something very deeply, but Clark mostly felt uncomfortable and a little bored.  
  
After a time, however, Yoru stirred and sighed, and Bruce apparently took this as a sign he could speak.  "I was deeply grieved to hear of Matsunaga- _san's_ death," he said softly.  
  
The teacher's face stayed almost expressionless, yet the lines of his visage somehow seemed sorrowful.  "You were very close to him during your time here."  
  
Bruce drew in a careful breath.  "Yes."  
  
Clark remembered Batman's steady hands collecting evidence around the garroted body, the glazed eyes gazing at the vigilante's expressionless face.  In the silence of the tea room, he heard Bruce swallow, once, and he didn't know what to think.  
  
Yoru- _sensei_ sighed again.  "I wish I could be of more help to you, Wayne- _san_."  
  
"I understand, _sensei_."   
  
The silence stretched out again for some time, and then Yoru started to put away the utensils.  Apparently the interview was over.  
  
As Clark and Bruce walked back through the garden toward their room, Clark hissed, "Is that all we--"  
  
Bruce raised a hand to forestall his protest.  "Wait," he said softly.  They didn't speak again as the two quickly changed and packed, beyond small and pragmatic exchanges.   
  
Soon, backpacks slung over shoulders, they were bidding goodbye to Yoru- _sensei_ and his household.  Tokiko and Kaori bowed politely:  hugs seemed incongruous with the girls in their formal kimono.   < Come back sooner next time, > Tokiko said softly, sadly, as Bruce said goodbye.  
  
< I'll try, Tocchan, > said Bruce, and the girl's eyes lit up at the sound of the childish nickname.  Bruce and Clark bowed and turned to head back down the mountain path.  Bruce ambled along at a relaxed pace until the compound disappeared around a corner, at which point his pace picked up both haste and urgency until the two of them were going down the trail at some speed.   
  
"That was a waste of our time, Bruce!"  Clark said in frustration.  "He didn't tell us anything at all."  
  
Bruce's face was grim.  "On the contrary,  Yoru- _sensei_ told me everything I needed to know."  
  
"Would you stop being obscure and explain how you learned _anything?"_  
  
Bruce stopped to turn to Clark under the arch of one of the weathered torii.  "You saw the scroll and the flowers Yoru put out for the ceremony?"  
  
Clark shrugged.  "Notice them?  I had nothing else to look at for twenty minutes."  
  
"The flowers were star magnolias, a spring flower.  The scroll had a cicada on it.  Cicadas are fall insects.  Both are glaringly inappropriate for a tea ceremony on New Year's Day."  
  
Clark snorted.  "Maybe Yoru- _sensei_ made a mistake."  
  
A look of pure disgust.  "Clark, if you went into a cathedral and saw the communion wafers had been replaced with Oreos and the crown of thorns on the crucifix switched for a baseball cap, would you say the priest had 'made a mistake'?  That's about as likely as a high master of the tea ceremony choosing those flowers and that scroll."  
  
"All right then, detective, what was the message?"  
  
"The star magnolia's name in Japanese is _kobushi_.  Written with different characters, _kobushi_ can mean 'fist.'  And Kyodai Ken's name means 'Great Fist.'"  
  
"And the cicada?"  
  
"A traditional symbol for rebirth."  Bruce gritted his teeth, but didn't seem to be angry at Clark.  "Yoru was telling me that he has reason to believe Kyodai Ken didn't die as he appeared to in our last meeting, and that he suspects he's behind Seio's--behind Matsunaga's murder.　　I think we'd better assume Matsunaga was on to something, something that has to do with Hakone.  We'll be heading there today."  
  
"Well, why didn't Yoru just say something to us?  Did he have to be so darn elliptical?"  Clark knew he sounded frustrated, but he felt like so much was happening that he was missing, unable to pick up on even with inhuman senses.  
  
Bruce looked almost angry for a moment.  "You look at Kaori and Tokiko, at all of his students there, and tell me what he has to lose by speaking openly."  
  
Clark felt abashed.  "All right, I can understand that."  Then he made a leap of intuition and grinned a touch smugly at Bruce.  "The tea bowl--it must have been a clue too, right?  He deliberately gave us those ugly bowls to represent...Kyodai Ken's soul, or something."  
  
Bruce shook his head, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  There was an odd expression on his face.  If it weren't so totally uncharacteristic, Clark might almost have called it _reverence_.  "Clark, in all my time at the dojo, I never once saw Yoru- _sensei_ use that bowl.  Not for his most illustrious guests.  He kept it under lock and key as some of the most priceless items of the household."  
  
He clapped a hand to Clark's shoulder.  "Today, we were accorded one of the highest honors we will ever be given in our lives."  Then he started back down the path again, leaving Clark to trail slightly behind, as bewildered by the awe in Bruce's voice as by the events of the day.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While trying to track Kyodai Ken and discover what he's up to, Clark and Bruce experience fine Japanese dining and communal bathing.

_Everyone is asleep_  
_There is nothing to come between_  
_The moon and me._  
_\--Enomoto Seifu-Jo_  
  
"I'm just checking here, Bruce:  We're in Japan because your old classmate, Kyodai Ken, who you suspected was dead, might be alive and planning some nefarious deed."  
  
"That's right, Clark."  
  
"So I'm certain there's a very good reason why we're trailing a vacationing yakuza boss and his girlfriend instead of going after Kyodai.  One which you're not bothering to tell me."  
  
"Two for two, Clark."  
  
Clark sighed and settled back against the hard train seat.  The sight-seeing train was slowly making its way up a mountainside, inching along the side of a steep ravine.  It was mostly empty except for the yakuza boss, snuggling with his pink-fur-clad girlfriend and surrounded by flunkies.  After the train made a couple of sharp switchbacks, Clark spoke again.  "You're afraid he might know you're on to him and you're using the yakuza as a decoy?"  
  
A sharp look from Bruce, almost appreciative.  "There might be hope for you yet.  As far as anyone knows, I have no reason to believe Kyodai is alive, so if I seem to be looking for him it's obvious Yoru has sent me a message of some sort.  Luckily our shady friend happens to be traveling to Hakone as well.  We'll stay wherever he stops for the night and get our bearings.  Maybe we'll be able to figure out what's going on."  
  
Another pause as the train ratcheted noisily along.  It looked cold outside and the air had the crisp scent of coming snow to it.  After a while, Clark said, "You said Kyodai knows about both of your identities?"  
  
Bruce grimaced.  "Yes.  He's fought both of us;  it's a dead giveaway."  He shot Clark a sidelong glance.  "I assume you've reached the same conclusion that I have:  if Superman is seen working openly with Batman while Clark Kent is traveling with Bruce Wayne, Kyodai might be able to put the pieces together."  
  
"The thought had crossed my mind."  
  
Bruce thumped a fist gently against the seat in front of him.  "That is something of a disadvantage."  
  
"I've worked around tougher ones.  I'm not exactly resourceless even out of uniform."  
  
Bruce snorted.  "What are you going to do, fight him so ineptly that he becomes incapacitated with laughter?"  
  
Clark shrugged.  "If he's distracted by me, you'll have an easier time taking him down.  The invulnerability makes me an excellent decoy if necessary."  They fell silent again as the train rattled along the wooded slope.  Then Clark looked over to see a wry smile tugging at the corner of Bruce's mouth.  "What's so funny?"  
  
Bruce gestured toward the yakuza, lording it over his subordinates and manhandling his giggling girlfriend.  "I was just imagining how this guy would feel to find out he was being tailed by Superman and Batman.  Do you think he'd just pass out, or would he wet himself first?"  
  
Clark stared at him as the train pulled into their station, trying not to laugh at the image.  "You're a sadistic man, you know?"  
  
Bruce stood up and grabbed his bag, glancing at Clark over his shoulder.  "I've been told that, yes."  


* * *

  
The inn the yakuza chose to stay at was small and exquisite, each room looking out over the mountains.  An older Japanese woman ushered Bruce and Clark into their room and explained that dinner would be served very soon in the dining hall, and the bath would be open after that.  They dropped off their bags and headed to dinner.  
  
Bruce grinned as a large plate of expensive sashimi was placed in front of Clark.  _Farmboy._    
  
Clark just raised an eyebrow at him, deftly picked up a piece of raw fish, and chewed it appreciatively.  "You thought a little raw fish could throw a man with an invulnerable stomach?" he asked rather smugly.  
  
Bruce shrugged.  "It's still a Kansan stomach.  It was worth a shot."  
  
"As long as I know what I'm eating, I'm fine.  It's the mysterious substances that throw me," Clark complained, poking gingerly at something that looked like rolled-up beige tissue paper.  
  
"That's just tofu."  
  
"Oh, well, no problem then."  Clark grinned as he ate it.  
  
Bruce grinned back as he saw the next course arriving over Clark's shoulder.  The server put down two individual braziers, each with a large shell balanced on it, filled with something that looked half-snail, half-oyster.  
  
< What's this? > Clark asked the server.  
  
< Very fresh, very fresh, > she reassured him, beaming.  Then she leaned over and lit the brazier.  
  
At the touch of flame, the mollusk started writhing in agony, cooking alive in its shell.  Clark watched the squirming shellfish in horrified fascination.  The server cheerfully slathered the palpitating mollusk with butter and put a little tent of foil over it.  Tapping noises came from beneath the foil as their dinner struggled in vain to escape the flame.  
  
Clark stared at Bruce.  
  
"You grew up on a farm, Clark.  Don't tell me you never saw animals killed for food."  
  
"We didn't usually cook them alive and watch them slowly die."  
  
"It's an invertebrate, Clark.  It doesn't feel pain."  The tapping beneath the foil was slowing down;  when it stopped Bruce removed the foil and began cutting up the cooked meat.  He grinned at Clark's expression.  "It's an abalone.  See, now you know what it is, so no problem."  He chewed and swallowed.  "It's delicious, a local specialty, and _very_ expensive."  
  
Clark pushed his little brazier over toward Bruce.  "I'm just not that hungry right now.  Enjoy."  
  
Bruce shrugged and tucked into Clark's serving as well.  "Sometime while we're here I'll have to take you out for _sakuraniku_."  
  
"Cherry blossom meat?  That doesn't sound so bad."  Clark picked up some pickled cabbage and chewed on it thoughtfully.  
  
Bruce's grin was condensed wickedness.  " _Sakuraniku_ is called that for its pink color, but it's actually horse sashimi."  
  
Clark stopped chewing.  "Raw horse?"  He looked slightly nauseated now.  
  
"It's funny, a lot of Americans have very strong taboos against eating horseflesh," said Bruce in a musingly innocent tone.  
  
Clark grimaced.  "Promise me you'll warn me if I'm ever about to eat any, Bruce."  
  
"Ah, so I have found the American weakness in your Kryptonian stomach?"  
  
Clark gnawed on some root or other and considered his dining companion.  "How would it look for WayneCorp P.R. if it was publicly known Bruce Wayne enjoyed eating raw horse?"

Bruce looked startled.  "I never said that!"  Clark looked innocent in turn, and Bruce added somewhat sheepishly, "All right, there's no way I'm eating Trigger or Silver, I admit it."

Clark smiled.  "Americans and their quaint dining taboos, huh?"

Bruce snorted and dug back into his abalone.

* * *

  
"Great, I'm hungry again already," Clark muttered as Bruce changed into his _yukata_ on the other side of the room.  
  
"It's your own fault;  you turned down the main course."  Bruce tied the sash on his white and blue robe and cocked an eyebrow at Clark, sitting cross-legged on the floor.  "Aren't you coming to the bath?"  
  
Clark blinked at him.  "What?  We took turns last night at the _dojo."_  
  
"Sure, but here there's a communal outdoor bath, hot springs."  Bruce barked something like a laugh at the look on Clark's face.  "Don't worry, it's segregated by sex, Clark.  You don't have to fret about anyone ogling you."  
  
Clark didn't feel any better, for some reason.  "That's all right, I'll just skip it."  
  
The other man frowned ominously.  "Clark, I didn't help pay your way here for you to play the ugly American and sulk in your room because you don't like the food or the baths.  You're getting some exposure to Japanese culture if I have to coerce you into it."  He tossed the other _yukata_ at Clark.  "You want to know if we can work together?  The answer is 'no,' unless you show a little open-mindedness."  
  
"I've got an open mind, I just don't like to get naked in front of strangers," Clark grumbled, but he changed into the _yukata_ anyway, as Bruce waited for him with crossed arms.  They padded down the hall together to a small changing room.  Bruce stripped down, putting his ___yukata___ in a basket near the door;  Clark followed suit more reluctantly, then trailed after Bruce into a large tiled room lined with shower-heads at knee level, Japanese men seated in front of some of them, washing themselves.   
  
Bruce was already sitting on a small stool in front of a faucet, dousing himself liberally.  Water slicked his black hair and ran down the silvery scars on his back.  He wiped water out of his eyes and grinned mockingly at Clark, still standing awkwardly, tiny washcloth strategically placed.  "Clark, if you actually manage to get this Justice Posse together--"  
  
"--Justice League--"  
  
"--there are probably going to have to be showers.  So maybe you should start getting used to it?"  
  
Clark sat down gingerly on the tiny stool, knowing he looked ridiculous.  "I was rather hoping we'd have enough money to give members personal shower facilities."  
  
Bruce snorted through soapy water.  "Any fool you convince to back the venture isn't going to waste money that could be spent on security to cater to your quaint modesty, Clark."  He rinsed the soap out of his hair, then abruptly dumped a bucket of water over the still-dry Kryptonian.   
  
Clark shook his dripping hair, spraying Bruce and several annoyed fellow-washers.  He scrubbed water out of his face and found himself smiling through his fingers at the other man.  "Does that mean I've found someone to pay for the security?"  He heard Bruce snort dismissively as he lathered soap between his hands and started washing, but he was starting to get used to dismissive snorts.  If Batman ever joined the League, it would be while dismissing the whole idea vehemently.  He heard Bruce get up and make his way to another door as he rinsed off his hair;  he hastily finished getting all the soap off his body and followed.  
  
The door opened into a small courtyard, the January air bitterly cold for a human.  Surrounded by rocks and shrubbery, a pool glimmered in the light of several small lamps.  Steam rose from the surface of the water, wafting across the pool in silvery trails.  Bruce was already safely ensconced in a corner of the pool;  Another five or six older Japanese men were sitting in different places in the bath.  They frankly gaped at Clark as he made his way toward the bath, tiny towel held awkwardly in front of him, and lowered himself into the bath near Bruce.  "They're staring at me," he muttered.  
  
Bruce's eyes were half-closed and he was almost smiling, relaxing in the hot water.  "You are rather a spectacle."  
  
"Great, thanks."  
  
Bruce made an annoyed sound in his throat.  "If you don't like being a spectacle, Clark, you shouldn't run around in a cape so often."  
  
"That's Superman.  Clark doesn't like being a spectacle."  
  
Bruce sighed and sank lower in the water.  "And they say _I_ have split-personality disorder."  He took a deep breath of the steamy air.  "Just relax and enjoy the bath."  His eyes snapped open again, filled with curiosity.  " _Can_ you enjoy this?  You can bathe in the sun's corona, this must feel tepid to you."  
  
Clark closed his eyes, considering.  "It feels nice.  I can feel the differences in temperature, and warmer is more pleasant.  It's just that it doesn't hurt no matter how hot it gets."  He shifted away from Bruce a little, then some more.  "I can tell it's warmer over here, for example."  Clark moved further into the warmer water and heard a murmur from the Japanese bathers.  He opened his eyes to see them all grinning in what seemed like approval.  
  
"You're in one of the hottest areas of the bath now, Clark, where the water comes in at full strength," Bruce explained.  "They're impressed."  
  
"Care to join me?"  
  
Bruce smiled lazily and stretched one shoulder, rotating it.  "I came here to relax, not to scald myself.  _I_ have no need to get into some kind of macho endurance test with you."  
  
"Especially one you'll lose."  
  
The smile became slightly edged.  "Indeed.  I pick my battles."  
  
They sat in the bath for quite a while in silence, soaking.  The elderly Japanese men gave Clark the thumbs-up sign and he grinned back sheepishly, then edged back away from the hottest area of the pool;  it would look suspicious if he weren't turning red from the heat by now.  Bruce's face was obscured and revealed between floating steam as he sat quietly, his eyes closed.  
  
One by one the Japanese bathers left, until Bruce and Clark were alone in the hot water.  Clark saw a fleck of white catch in Bruce's hair.  "It's snowing?"  The next few flakes melted into the surface of the pool, and then the air was filled with feathery white.  Across the pool, Bruce looked up into the black sky filled with snow and smiled to himself.  Then he stuck out his tongue to capture a stray flake.  It was very quiet, the world around them hushed with snowfall.  
  
Clark felt the warmth of the water around him, the cool of the snowflakes melting against his skin.  Bruce's dark hair was starred with melting snow.  "Thank you," he said.  
  
Bruce looked surprised.  "For what?"  
  
"For making me come out here."  
  
"Oh."  Bruce moved a little closer to Clark, close enough to splash a wave of steaming water over him.  "We'll make a non-ugly American of you yet, Clark."  He pulled himself out of the water, grabbing his towel and drying off, water running down his legs to pool at his feet, snow falling all around him.  "It's late, we'd better head in."  


* * *

  
Bruce turned on the _kotatsu_ \--a cloth-draped coffee table with a heater underneath--and tucked his legs under it, sighing.  He generally didn't allow himself to be uncomfortable in the cold--he could hardly afford it, considering his usual workplace.  But for some reason, when he was visiting Japan he felt freer to enjoy the luxury of being warm.  He wiggled his toes in the hot air under the table, feeling unusually hedonistic.  Clark joined him, his face somewhat grave.  
  
"Bruce," he said softly, then stopped.   
  
Bruce almost smiled.  He had known this was coming.  "You don't need my permission, Clark."  
  
""If anyone happened to notice that when Clark Kent was out of town, Superman didn't seem to be there either...considering I can get back there in just a few minutes..." His voice trailed off uncertainly.  
  
"You don't need my permission," Bruce repeated.  
  
Clark rested his forearms on the table.  "I could bring you along too, drop you off in Gotham for one night."  
  
It was tempting.  More than he had expected it to be, but he shook his head.  "I'm not going to turn the world's mightiest being into my personal taxi service.  People won't notice when Batman's gone for a few days, because he's so rarely spotted anyway."  He sighed.  "I can't always be there.  At some level, I have to trust the Gotham police to do their jobs, at least somewhat.  I can't do it all."  Clark had never bothered to put his glasses back on after the bath;  Bruce made himself meet those turquoise eyes and speak without rancor.  "Go back to Metropolis, Clark, for the afternoon there.  I promise I won't hold it against you."  
  
Clark sighed in what looked like relief, though why his opinion on the matter mattered to the Kryptonian Bruce had no idea.  In a moment Superman was sliding the window open, pausing briefly on the sill and looking back.  
  
"This is why you're training the boy, isn't it?  So that you can have help when you need it, so you won't have to leave Gotham unprotected."  He sounded neither approving nor disapproving.  
  
Bruce didn't look at Superman.  "I took in Dick because he needed a family.  I'm training him because he left me little choice."  Eventually the silence behind him became that of absence, not presence, and Bruce felt his shoulders relax a little.  
  
He wasn't sure if what he had said to Clark was the truth or not, and he wasn't sure which answer was more alarming to him.  
  
He did know that Dick would be expecting him to call about now, to tell him how his New Year's Eve with Alfred had been, and to wish him a happy new year.  
  
He pulled out his cell phone, smiling a little despite himself, and listened to Dick talk about his hopes for the next year.  _Let it be better than the last one for you, Dick,_ Bruce thought with a pang.  But he was still warm and relaxed from the bath and the kotatsu, so he was able to be something close to cheerful as the boy chattered about how Alfred wouldn't let him drink any champagne at all and how unfair that was.  
  
After hanging up the phone, Bruce found himself in a surprisingly quiet room.  No very large Kryptonians stomping around and acting awkward and flustered.  If it was all an act.  Bruce frowned to himself and tried to put together Clark's behavior in a way that made sense.  Could someone as collected and charismatic as Superman honestly be so inept when wearing a shirt and pants?  Or wearing nothing at all, he thought, remembering Clark standing naked and abashed at the edge of the bath.  It was utterly ludicrous to imagine someone who looked like--that--being nervous or uncomfortable.  It was like imagining Zeus appearing to Danae in a shower of gold and then apologizing for getting glitter all over the floor.  Krishna coming to Radha in all his glory and stepping in cow dung on the way.  Gods did not become discombobulated.  
  
Was it possible, however, that Clark _did?_  
  
Bruce wasn't sure he liked that possibility, but his reactions to Superman were part of this puzzle he was trying to piece together, data that he couldn't afford to ignore.  He remembered his fury at Clark at the _ __dojo___ , how angry he had felt at believing the Kryptonian was acting like a bumbling fool in front of him.  He had said it was because it was insulting to have Clark acting in front of him.  It insulted his intelligence.  That was true.  
  
He sipped a little green tea in the silent room and forced himself to continue the line of thought, a good detective.  At a deeper level, it was insulting to think that Clark wasn't being honest with him, wasn't showing him his true face.  Bruce was being honest with him, after all.  "Brucie" had hardly made an appearance during this trip, and certainly not when he was with Clark.  So it was...insulting to think that Clark wasn't being as open as he was, that he was leaving up the shields and masks Bruce was trying to lower as much as possible.  Going back over their two days in Japan, Bruce found himself rather alarmed at how much of himself he had revealed to Clark.  The man seemed to have that ability, the power to make people open up to him.  To trust him.  To like him.  
  
It apparently was not an ability Bruce Wayne had.  Not if Clark didn't trust him enough to be himself in private.  
  
Bruce threw the covers off the futon on the floor and crawled under them.  Irritation chewed at him, whether at Clark for not trusting him or himself for wanting Clark to do so he didn't know.  He knew perfectly well he was neither likeable nor particularly trustworthy;  he had worked hard at creating exactly that persona for Batman.  
  
So why did he suddenly feel like he had lost something?  
  
Hours later, Clark returned just as the first rays of dawn were starting to turn the room from black to gray.   He moved almost silently through the room, slipping beneath the futon blankets with a tiny sigh.  
  
He was so quiet, in fact, that he wouldn't have woken Bruce up at all.   
  
That is, if Bruce had been asleep.

\--------

For descriptive purposes, check out [a video of abalone being cooked](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4EgITYgZm0). It's very short (:50) and extremely illustrative!


	5. Chapter 5

_The crow has flown away:_  
 _swaying in the evening sun,_  
 _a leafless tree._  
 _\--Soseki Natsume_  
  
Clark Kent tucked his toothbrush into his backpack and looked at himself critically in the mirror.  That damn curl was sliding down into his eyes again, and he pushed it up and patted it into place once more.  Almost two years as a superhero and he still couldn't get his hair to behave correctly.  
  
He walked back out into the main room to find Bruce Wayne glowering at a newspaper with an expression he usually reserved for hardened criminals.  "What's the problem, Bruce?"  
  
Bruce shook the newspaper at him.  A small news item, just a tiny box:  "Japan's Prime Minister to open restoration project in Hakone."  A few phrases jumped out at Clark:  _Usher in New Year...symbolic stand against corruption in government...Tokaido Road..._  
  
"Hm," Clark said.  "Looks like we've finally got a lead on what Kyodai's up to."  Bruce nodded grimly.  "So...shouldn't Superman stop by and warn the Prime Minister?"  
  
"Only if you want to alert Kyodai that we're definitely on to him and let him go to ground," Bruce said.  He retreated behind the newspaper;  Clark couldn't see his face.  "He killed Matsunaga.  I'm not going to let him slip away."   
  
The voice behind the paper was close to Batman's, but not quite.  It made Clark a little uneasy, somehow.  He shouldered his backpack.  "Well, we'd better head toward the Tokaido Road then."

* * *

To get to the remnants of the old imperial road that connected Tokyo and Kyoto required taking a train, then a gondola, and apparently then a boat, all the while pretending to trail the unwitting yakuza tourist. The train wasn't going to arrive for a while, so Clark wandered into a local gift shop.  He picked up a painting of Mt. Fuji in garish flourescent colors on black velvet.  "I think my ma might like this."  
  
Bruce Wayne looked over his shoulder and wrinkled his lip.  "You have got to be kidding me."  
  
"What, no lecture about how this is actually some kind of Zen aesthetic beyond the ken of Western souls?"  
  
Bruce extricated the velvet painting from Clark's hands.  "No, Clark.  _This_ is just tacky."  
  
Clark couldn't help but smile a little at the outraged tone of Bruce's voice.  "But seriously, I should buy something to give my parents as a souvenir.  Just...not that painting," he added hastily.  Like with the horse meat, he and Bruce seemed to often find themselves in situations where a bluff was all too likely to be called.  
  
Bruce rummaged through the rows of Hello Kitty-themed merchandise until he found a small wooden box with a carving on the lid of a small torii in front of Fuji.  "This is pretty good quality for the price," he said, examining it critically.   
  
Clark scooped it from his hands.  "Great, I trust you," he said lightly, and went to the register.  Bruce trailed after, his hands in his pockets.   
  
"I have to admit, Clark, I find it hard to imagine you as having parents," Bruce said as the register chimed and Clark fumbled with making the right change.  
  
Clark frowned as the store door clicked shut behind them.  "Huh?"  
  
"I mean...Superman's parents?  One rather imagines super-parents or such."  
  
Clark squinted at Bruce, confused.  "Super-parents?  I mean, they're great folks..."  
  
The train pulled up and Clark hurried for it.  "That's not quite what I meant..." Bruce said behind him, but didn't continue, breaking off to hurry to the train.  
  
The train was a funicular, ascending a mountain at a close-to-vertical angle.  The air was crisp and clear after last night's snow, and Clark craned his head at the view.  "I can't see Fuji."  
  
"The view's better from the gondola we'll take next, and the ship.  This is one of the best times of year to see it;  there's a lot less air pollution over the New Year's holiday."  
  
Clark leaned back and watched the mountains rise up around them, snowy and sparkling in the sun.  "So what _did_ you mean about my parents?"  
  
"I don't know...maybe I'm just curious what kind of life you had, growing up."  Bruce was looking out the window away from Clark.  
  
Clark shrugged.  "I'd get up in the morning and do the chores, go to school, come home and do homework, maybe get together with my friends to see a movie downtown...nothing too special."  
  
"Nothing special," Bruce repeated flatly.  
  
"My parents taught me not to use my powers too much, and they really weren't reliably there until my late teens anyway.  The first time I tried to fly I almost wrecked the barn," Clark smiled fondly at the memory.  "Really, my day-to-day life growing up was...very ordinary."  
  
Bruce made a snorting noise that almost became a sigh near the end.  "It just seems...ironic to me, that the most extraordinary person on the planet could have an 'ordinary' childhood."  
  
Clark laughed out loud at that. 　"I might have extraordinary powers, Bruce, but I'm pretty damn ordinary compared to someone like you."  He shook his head at Bruce's expression.  "Superman's just...some lucky genetics and a pretty costume.  I didn't craft him over years like you did Batman, all the effort and training... _that's_ extraordinary.  I mean, Batman's _real."_

  
The funicular jarred to a stop and Clark hopped off the train.  Bruce followed him more slowly.  After a moment Clark heard him mutter almost to himself, "That's kind of what I worry about."  Which didn't seem connected to anything they'd been talking about, because it made it sound like he was referencing Batman being real.  Clark had seen how comfortable Bruce was as Batman, how he was more truly _himself_ in the suit.  How could anyone be _worried_ about being an authentic superhero, not just always...faking it?  Sometimes Bruce didn't make any sense at all.

* * *

  
From the top of this mountain Clark could finally see Fuji clearly, looming in the distance, its symmetrical slopes white with snow.  Bruce stood next to him in the cold breeze, his arms wrapped around his chest, frowning almost angrily at the mountain.  He seemed to have slipped into a bad mood, and even suggesting they buy matching fans emblazoned with a popular Japanese boy band had done nothing to cheer him up.  
  
"It's beautiful," Clark breathed.  "I'd love to climb it someday."  
  
Bruce huffed slightly, his breath white and feathery.  "Clark, you can just fly to the top anytime you like."  
  
"It's not the being at the top that's important, it's the journey to get there."  
  
"Very deep, Clark, very deep.  And while we're trading metaphors, consider this one:  Fuji looks lovely and pristine from here, but its slopes are covered with junk and crap thrown there by the people who've gone before."  He stalked toward the gondola station, jamming his hands in his pockets.  
  
Clark caught up with him and they got into the gondola car together.  It lifted off, beginning the long descent down the mountain toward a little lake nestled between hills far at the bottom.  Bruce was glaring out the window, the silence not as friendly as Clark would have liked it to be.  Groping for something to discuss, Clark said, "So, how do you know this Matsunaga wasn't working with Kyodai?  Maybe he threatened to back out or something."  
  
He had hoped to move Bruce into detective mode--even being lectured by him would be better than the cold silence--but Bruce just gave him a withering look.  "Ninja work _alone_ ," he answered.  Then he turned back to the window.  "Besides, Seio would never work with Kyodai.  Seio was--he wasn't like that."  
  
The gondola hitched past a pylon, rattling.  When quiet returned, Clark ventured, "Well, what _was_ he like?"  
  
Bruce rested one palm on the cold glass of the window.  "My Japanese wasn't so good when I first arrived at Yoru- _sensei_ 's.  Most of the other students were too uncomfortable with their English to talk to me.  Some...weren't very friendly."  He drew his hand down the glass slowly.  "But Seio always took the time to talk to me, even though his English wasn't great.  He said it gave us both a chance to learn together.  He'd make mistakes and laugh and laugh when I explained them.  He was a rich kid, heir to a major construction company, but...he was never arrogant or entitled.  Yoru- _sensei_ saw something in him worth training.  It made my time in Japan much easier, having a--someone I could talk to.  Seio- _kun_ ," he said very softly.  Not to Clark.  
  
"You were close."  
  
"I hadn't talked to him in years."  
  
"That isn't what's important with friends."  Bruce flinched very slightly at the last word and said nothing;  the rest of the ride passed in silence.  
  
At the bottom of the hill, they exited the gondola and strolled toward the lake, the still-oblivious yakuza boss well ahead of them.  "So now we take a boat across the lake?  What kind of boat?"  
  
"You'll see."  The corner of Bruce's mouth had a hint of smirk;  it was the first thing close to a smile Clark had seen that day.  They rounded the corner and Clark stopped dead.  
  
"No way."  At the dock was a ferry decked out in bright scarlet with garish gold trim, masts reaching up into the sky.  "The ferry is a faux _pirate ship_?"  Clark started laughing at the image of the synthetic pirate ship up against the Japanese hills;  he looked over to see Bruce's expression fairly close to a smile at Clark's enthusiasm.  Clark swashbuckled a few steps around the other man.  "Arrr, matey," he growled, and was gratified to see the smile relax into something even closer to genuine.

"Arrr," Bruce agreed, rolling his eyes slightly.  He could roll his eyes all he wanted if he'd smile while doing it, as far as Clark was concerned.  
  
The ferry launched soon with Clark and Bruce on it, Clark still chortling and playing at being a pirate, pulling out every bit obf jargon he knew.  "Avast, ye landlubbers!  Scurvy scoundrels!" he threatened a passing boat.  "Or prepare ye to taste cold steel at the hands of Captains Wayne and Kent!"  Bruce was nearly laughing at him and his appalling English accent now, which only encouraged him more:  apparently incompetence could be useful for things other than hiding secret identities.  
  
"You need a pirate name, Captain Kent."  
  
"I was thinking maybe Trueheart.  Trueheart and his faithful comrade Blackgrouch."  Bruce pulled a sour face that only seemed to emphasize the point as Clark wandered up to the bow of the ship, still chuckling.  He got as close as he could to the bow--which wasn't close, for safety reasons--and flung his arms out.  "I'm king of the world!"  
  
Bruce leaned against a railing, his arms crossed against the cold, eyeing Clark sardonically.  "Where is a merciful iceberg when you need one?"  He wasn't exactly smiling, but he no longer seemed to be in the truly dark mood he had been in earlier.  
  
Clark joined Bruce against the railing, gesturing melodramatically.  "Bruce, you have to promise me, if we do sink...you'll go on without me, live your life.  Never let go, Bruce."  
  
Bruce sighed.  "Clark, advising me to 'never let go' is rather like advising the sun to rise.  Not exactly a problem for me."  A pause.  Then he snorted slightly to himself.  "Trueheart."  
  
The ship started to pull into the dock and Clark glanced over at Bruce.  "I'm worried about you."  Bruce looked surprised, and Clark continued, "You almost laughed for a little bit there.  I was afraid you might sprain your lips or something.  You sure you're okay?"  
  
A barked laugh, but an actual laugh in response.  "I'm okay, Clark."  Bruce pushed off from the railing as the ship shuddered to a halt.  "And I'll be more okay when we get the bastard who killed Seio."  He stopped and looked back at Clark.  "Ready, matey?"  
  
Clark tried to look serious, but couldn't help smiling a little.  "Aye aye, Cap'n."  
  
Together they stepped off the ship and headed toward where the Prime Minister was going to give his speech.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the old Tokaido Road, Batman and Clark Kent confront the assassin Kyodai Ken.

_I go out of darkness_  
_Onto a road of darkness_  
_Lit only by the far off_  
_Moon on the edge of the mountains._  
_\--Izumi Shikibu_  
  
The dock Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne alighted upon led to small highway looping by the lake.  "Is this that Tokaido Road?"  Clark asked as the two of them came to the street.  
  
Bruce shook his head, his eyes flicking back and forth, scanning the crowd.  He had been nearly joking with Clark on the ship, but he was all business now.  Clark felt his mood shifting to professional to match it.  He reminded himself of the costume under his clothes.  He was Superman.  That he looked like Clark Kent at the moment was unimportant.  
  
"The Tokaido Road hasn't been a real road for nearly a century, Clark," Bruce explained as he moved through the crowd gracefully.  "Some of this highway is its remnants, but the Prime Minister will be speaking at the far end of one of the preserved stretches of it."  He paused.  "Clark, I probably need to be in uniform for this.  But you can't be, or Kyodai might make the connection."  
  
"I understand.  Like I said, I'm not entirely helpless as Clark."  
  
A flash of teeth.  "Hopeless, but not helpless."  Then the space by his side was empty.  
  
Clark ambled across the street to the place where the old road began.  On either side of the path were ancient cedars, planted when the road was still in use.  Needles littered the road, which was paved with irregular stones.  The line of cedars quickly gave way to forested hill on the left-hand side of the path.  
  
As Clark strolled, surrounded by other walking tourists, he listened carefully, hearing the sound of dark wings ghosting his progress, high up in the cedars.  If he had looked up, perhaps he could have caught just a glimpse of black silk between the branches.  
  
He didn't look up.  He was just a friendly tourist, going on a little ahead of his playboy travelling companion.  Innocuous and clueless.  
  
Despite the crowds, it seemed oddly hushed, the blanket of orange needles dampening the sound of chattering sightseers.  Up ahead Clark could see the crowd gathered around the podium set in the woods from which the Prime Minister would speak to announce a new project to restore portions of the Tokaido Road.  It was still a ways off when he heard Batman whisper, too low to be heard by anyone by him:  "Clark.  I need you to find some excuse to step off the path to your left and wander about thirty meters into the woods."  Clark cocked an eyebrow;  he couldn't respond to Bruce easily, but he started to scan the brush to his left.  Batman's voice again, apparently responding to Clark's curious expression:  "There are motivations for Kyodai more powerful than the need to complete his contract."  The low voice was perfectly level, so perfectly level that it was startling.  "We're going to take advantage of that."    
  
Clark eyed the side of the path until he saw a gap through the trees that could possibly be mistaken for another trail.  He struck off through it cheerfully, just a stupid American tourist who didn't know enough to stay on the trail.  
  
He could hear Batman in the trees above him and felt oddly reassured by the thought that the vigilante was keeping an eye on him.  Kyodai Ken almost certainly could do nothing to harm Clark Kent, but it still felt good, somehow, to know the Dark Knight was keeping watch.  
  
That was an unexpected reaction, and Clark was so busy mulling it over that it wasn't at all hard to act surprised when a dark shadow dropped down behind him and pulled his head back.  "Don't move," snarled a sibilant voice in his ear.  He felt a blade at his throat, cold and razor-sharp, and went as still as any regular human would at the threat.  
  
Batman dropped down from a tree to stand in front of the two of them.  "Let him go."  In the distance, the Prime Minister started to speak.  
  
Kyodai laughed.  "Threatening the innocent always flushes you out, Batman."  
  
"Let him go," Batman repeated.  
  
The ninja's voice was both mocking and inquisitive.  "Or is there something special about _this_ innocent as well?"  _He knows.  He's guessed my secret identity_ , Clark thought in a sudden panic, then realized that didn't seem to be what Kyodai was speaking of at all.  "Shall I slit his throat quickly, like a butchered pig?" Kyodai continued.  "Or shall I slide the blade into his stomach and let you watch him die slowly?  As slowly as Seio- _chan_ did?  Give him a chance to beg me for mercy too?"  
  
Batman's hands twitched, very slightly.  "He didn't die slowly," he said.  "I checked the body.  It was quick.  It was quick," he repeated with a strange, flat emphasis.  
  
"It was slow enough for him to wonder why you weren't there.  I made sure of that."  
  
He couldn't see Bruce's eyes, but something about the man's stance, the slightly hitching breath he took at the ninja's last words, convinced Clark it was time to fulfill his duties as distraction.  "Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me," he whimpered.  Play to the man's obvious need to hear people grovel to him, make him smug and careless.  "Please, please, just let me go.  I haven't done anything wrong!"  
  
Kyodai chuckled gleefully, clearly relishing his captive's cowering tone.  "Oh, you've made one fatal mistake.  You've let yourself become Bruce Wayne's fr--"  
  
With no warning, Batman came at Kyodai Ken through the brush, silent as a thrown blade.  Clark threw himself to the side as any smart civilian would.  
  
He felt the blade brush across his throat, a brief kiss of metal across unbreakable skin, and hoped Kyodai would be too distracted to notice it had drawn no blood.  
  
The ninja was indeed distracted, distracted enough that Clark was able to get his legs "accidentally" tangled with his as he tried to move away, throwing him off-balance.  There was a crunching thump as Batman's boots connected squarely with the ninja's chest.  Kyodai twisted out of the way under the blow and grabbed Batman's ankle, throwing him to the ground in turn, but his motions were sluggish and pained now.  Batman picked him up and cracked him into a boulder;  Kyodai went limp as his head connected with the stone.  
  
Batman held him there a moment longer, hands clenched in the unconscious ninja's clothing.  "It was quick, you lying bastard," he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.  Then he dropped the body like rubbish, kneeling to snap restraints on his hands.  The Dark Knight turned to look at Clark, standing along the dead bracken and evergreen brush, dirt in his hair and twigs on his shirt.  "You might want to tell the Prime Minister's bodyguards there's an assassin tied up in the woods here."  He turned to go.  
  
"Batman--"  The dark figure stopped and looked back.  Clark suddenly wished he had been able to call him "Bruce" safely;  he didn't know why.  Then he realized he had no idea what he had meant to say.  The silence stretched on too long, both men standing very still.  Finally Clark cleared his throat and said, "Thank you."  
  
The other man nodded once and was gone, his feet making no sound at all in the underbrush.  
  
Clark crashed through the woods back toward the voices of the crowd to tell the police that Batman had appeared to save his life and presumably the Prime Minister's as well.  
  


* * *

  
After the police finally released him, convinced he had told them all he knew, Clark made his way toward the dock again.  From a distance, he could see a man leaning his elbows on a railing and looking out over the water, his back to Clark.  Cold wind moved through his hair.  He looked very solitary on the dock, the bustle of the crowd moving around him as he stood, unmoving.    
  
As Clark drew closer, Bruce turned slightly, just enough to acknowledge his presence.  "I've got us two tickets back to Tokyo.  The train station's over there.  Train leaves in about fifteen minutes."  A gust of wind hit his face and he squinted slightly.  "I also called the airline and got us tickets back to the States tomorrow.  Flights were all booked to Metropolis, so I've got you coming to Gotham and taking a train down.  Hope you don't mind."  His voice was clipped and businesslike.  
  
"I've still got a few days left in my vacation.  I don't need to head back right away."  Clark felt stupid the moment he said it.  
  
"This wasn't a vacation for me, Clark.  And it's over.  I have one thing left to do and then I'm going home."    
  
Clark leaned on the rail next to Bruce, looking at the other man's profile.  He should just let it go, the other man clearly wanted nothing more to do with him, wanted nothing more than to be alone.  He remembered the sudden shift in Batman's posture when Kyodai had almost called him Bruce's friend.  The shift in his breathing when told that Matsunaga had suffered.   
  
"Don't think you're getting out of showing me around Tokyo this last night, Bruce."  Bruce shot him a surprised look and he kept his voice light.  "I didn't let you drag me all the way to Japan to just ditch me in a spendy hotel room when you don't need me any more, Wayne."  
  
" _I_ dragged _you_ here?"    
  
"I figure you owe me some more sightseeing for all the inconvenience you put me through."  
  
" _I_ owe--" Bruce sputtered.  "You've got to be kidding me."  
  
Clark grinned at him.  "Yes, I'm kidding you.  But I thought it would be better for your pride than my announcing I wasn't going to let you mope in your room tonight."  
  
Bruce stared at him.  His mouth twitched very slightly.  "All right, Kent, if I grant that I apparently _owe_ you some more sightseeing, what would you like to see?"  
  
Clark pushed off from the railing.  "Oh, I trust you to figure out something," he said airily.  He pushed up his coat sleeve and tapped his watch.  "We'd better get to our train, hadn't we?"  
  


* * *

  
The train rattled through the Tokyo suburbs while Bruce Wayne racked his brain for sightseeing choices.  There was the Meiji Shrine, Clark might like that, although at this time of year it was a bit bleak.  There was a little sword museum that was very nice--they had a few katana there that were even more valuable than they realized, and Clark might enjoy seeing those.  There was always Tokyo Tower, but really the view from there wasn't terribly good--and there was always the chance it would get attacked by demons yet again, turning it into a work night for both of them.  Bruce turned over various options in his head, analyzing them carefully.  Part of him was annoyed, suspecting that Clark had set him this challenge on purpose to keep him from brooding..  
  
Another part of him was just happy to have something neutral to think about.  
  
The train pulled to a stop in Tokyo and Bruce still hadn't come up with a good plan.  Frustrating.  He could work out a perfectly good assault strategy against a squad of ninjas from the League of Shadows, but he couldn't come up with a sightseeing itinerary for one afternoon?  
  
He just didn't feel like he knew Clark well enough to know what he'd enjoy.  In desperation, he began to try and come up with the most repulsively esoteric dining experience he could think of;  it was at least fun to find ways to make Clark squirm while eating.  Bruce wondered if eel would be enough to do Kent in, or if he'd have to go for whale.  
  
He was still lost in thought as they made their way through the streets of Tokyo, but not so absorbed he didn't hear the crowd noise change abruptly to a horrified murmur.  He snapped to attention and followed the gaze of the surrounding people to where a window-washer's machinery had snapped, leaving him dangling fifty stories up.  Bruce didn't even need to look to his side to know he was alone.  He heard someone in the crowd gasp, _"Hora!  Sora wo miro--!"_ and smiled very slightly.  
  
Then he looked up in the sky with everyone else.  
  
As Superman lowered the terrified window-washer gently to the ground in the middle of Shinjuku, approximately a thousand cell phones were flipped open and clicking wildly.  A few of the bolder schoolgirls in the crowd jumped forward, begging the Kryptonian to sign their notebooks.  He obliged in polite Japanese, which caused a ripple of stunned approval to go through the crowd.  Then one young woman threw her arms around his neck, asking her friends to take a picture of her with him.  Kal-El quickly held up two fingers in the peace sign, and she squealed and kissed him on the cheek.  
  
Superman blushed red and attempted to politely extricate himself from her adoring grasp, only to have one of her friends take her place and demand the process be done again.  Superman's bright blue gaze raked the area around him until he met Bruce's eyes, pleading naked on his face.  Bruce had no idea what Superman thought Batman could do to help--scare everyone away?  He shrugged, knowing that Superman could tell Bruce was rather enjoying his predicament.  The Kryptonian actually looked rather charming draped with uniformed Japanese schoolgirls.  He also looked deeply uncomfortable and embarrassed.    
  
He looked a great deal like awkward, gawky Clark Kent in a Superman suit.  
  
The incongruity struck Bruce so oddly that he almost laughed out loud.  Clark gave him a look torn between irritation and sheepishness, then turned his attention back to the signatures and photos.  Bruce took advantage of that to slip away to their hotel.  Clark could catch up later.  He checked in for both of them and used the time to get caught up on some business correspondence.  From time to time the image of Clark looking flustered and overwhelmed in his bright suit would appear before him and he would find himself smiling slightly.  Which was annoying, but he decided he could live with it for now.  
  
Almost an hour went by before Clark showed up at the hotel, knocking on Bruce's door.  "Good grief," he said, flopping unceremoniously on Bruce's bed and throwing a forearm over his eyes, "I think young Japanese women have super-exhausting powers."  
  
Bruce whacked one of the sneaker-clad feet.  "No rest for the wicked, Kent.  You wanted me to show you Tokyo, and I finally know exactly where to take you."  
  
Clark peeked out from under his arm, glasses askew.  "Where's that?"  
  
"Akihabara, also known as Nerdvana."  Bruce smirked.  "I think you'll fit in just fine." 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark and Bruce visit Akihabara. Geekiness ensues.

_There is white frost on the pond  
And on the grass.  
There is light mist.  
I walk on frozen grass that goes crack  
And my heart beats  
And it is delightful.  
\--Anonymous geisha song_  
  
The train sped away from Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne as they stood on the platform in Akihabara.  Clark looked over at Bruce, the wind of the train's passing lifting the other man's hair and plastering his black leather duster around him.  The other man looked flawlessly saturnine and collected as they left the station, and Clark felt a twinge of something like envy as he caught sight of the two of them reflected in a store window together.  His comfortable old coat looked shabby and worn next to Bruce's sophisticated regalia.  And it wasn't just the wardrobe, of course;  Clark could buy a leather jacket, but he could never wear clothing with that kind of panache and grace.  He was forced to mentally amend that when honesty required him to admit he did carry off the red and blue with a certain elan.  But that was different--that was a costume, not _clothing._  
  
Clark sighed to himself.  But then his gaze passed through his reflection and he realized he was looking at a dazzling display of figurines of all shapes and sizes.  He stopped dead in the street and various people bumped into him from behind before he scooted forward out of the way.  Bruce had moved on with the flow of the crowd and eventually made his way back to Clark, looking somewhat annoyed.  His expression shifted into amused as he looked at Clark's face.  
  
"See anything you like?"  
  
"Do I see anything I _don't_ like?" Clark said.  He moved into the shop, trailed by a smug-looking Bruce.  "I don't believe it, they've got _Speed Racer_ stuff here!"  
  
" _Mach-Go-Go-Go."_  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"That was its name in Japan," said Bruce, putting his hands in his pockets and looking innocent.  Clark raised an eyebrow at him, but he just looked blandly back.  Clark looked at another figurine on a different shelf, a boy in a cape like white wings.  "I loved this show," he said, mostly to himself.  
  
"You haven't bought yourself a souvenir yet," Bruce said, looking over his shoulder.   
  
Clark looked from Bruce to the little figure on the shelf, torn.  "Shouldn't I get something a little more...traditional?"  
  
Bruce reached around Clark, scooped up the white-caped figure and the dark-clad one next to it, and put them in Clark's hand.  "Meaningful is more important than traditional," he said and wandered out of the store.  Clark followed after soon, a small bag in his hand.  
  
"Hungry?"  Bruce asked as the crowd ebbed and flowed around them.  At Clark's nod, he said, "What are you in the mood for?"  
  
"Would it be awfully gauche of me to admit I'd like something familiar?  Is there anyplace we can get some pizza, maybe?"  
  
Bruce's smile was suspiciously wicked.  "Sure thing."  


* * *

  
Clark's menu slapped hard against the table.  _"No,_ Bruce.  I've eaten raw shrimp here, I've eaten squid, I've eaten little tiny whole fish with buggy eyes over rice, I've even eaten _natto_ , but this?  This is _too much_."  His tone was that of a man finally pushed beyond all endurance.  "Corn is a wonderful thing, but corn on pizza is _wrong._   And that's _final."  
  
_ "There's a very nice mayonnaise pizza here."  
  
"That's a whole different _kind_ of wrong.  And it still has corn on it!" Clark pointed out, his tone deeply offended.  "Do they _all_ have corn on them?"  
  
Bruce put the menu up in front of his face.  "Well, there's the corn, potatoes, spinach and corn pizza.  That hasn't got _much_ corn on it."  The menu was shaking slightly, Clark noted with irritation.  
  
"Pepperoni.  Is it asking so much to have a pepperoni pizza?"  
  
"Apparently."  Bruce peeked out from around the side of the menu, his face perhaps just a bit pink from suppressed laughter.  "Would prosciutto do?"  
  
"I suppose it will have to," Clark acquiesced rather sullenly.  
  
"You're a Kansas boy, I thought you'd love corn," Bruce said.  
  
"Corn has its place.  But not on pizza."  
  
The prosciutto pizza was actually surprisingly good and Clark ate half of it while regaling Bruce with stories of the cartoons he had enjoyed as a child.  Bruce affected a rather superior air, but had a tendency to correct Clark on obscure details without thinking.  Clark decided not to point this out to him and just enjoy the conversation.  Clark found himself speaking animatedly, waving his hands about, more relaxed than he'd been for...well, for a long time.  There was no one in Metropolis he could talk to like this, and the superhero community didn't spend its spare time discussing the relative strengths of the ORX-005 Gaplant Gundam versus the AMX-003 Gaza-C model.  
  
Despite Bruce's insistence that he had never heard of this show, his facial expressions at Clark's arguments made it clear he favored the AMX-003.  
  
Back on the sidewalk after their pizza, Clark and Bruce kept strolling.  Dusk was just starting to fall, the store lights blinking on one by one.  A young woman in a tiny black skirt and a frilly white apron pushed a flier into Clark's hands as they went by.  "Maid cafe," Bruce said casually, glancing over.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Maid cafe.  Girls dress up in skimpy little maid outfits and serve you tea and coffee while calling you their lord and master.  Maybe we should check it out."  Bruce smirked at the look on Clark's face.  "Oh come now, Clark.  Don't tell me you wouldn't find the idea of a pretty girl kneeling down to put a little sugar in your tea appealing."  Bruce tilted his head and simpered slightly, fluttering his eyelashes.  "Oh, _Master Clark,_ your tea, it is so very _strong_.  Just like _you,_ master.  Let me...sweeten it up a little, my lord..."  He threw back his head and laughed out loud as Clark nearly dropped the pamphlet, looking around for somewhere to deposit it.  No trash cans anywhere, of course.  A country with no public trash cans and no litter, even Clark could hardly believe that.  He finally stuffed it into his backpack, sure that he had gone through scarlet and out the other side by now.  
  
As he hastened to catch up with Bruce he realized he'd never heard Bruce laugh like that.  


* * *

  
Bruce was still chuckling to himself as he felt Clark draw up beside him again.  He looked over at the Kansan, whose face was still quite red, and shook his head slightly.  If he had known Superman would be this easy to fluster when in civilian clothes, he would have gotten Kal-El out of the costume long before now.  Clark jammed his hands into his coat and hunched his shoulders, looking like he wanted to disappear.  Bruce felt the laughter shift into something closer to a sigh as he looked at Clark in his grungy, patched coat and jeans with grass stains at the knees, lived-in clothes.  Bruce's jacket was purchased by Alfred two weeks ago, his sweater would be thrown away as soon as it was stained or worn at all.  No history, no personality.  All part of the proper costume for a dissolute playboy.  
  
It would be nice, he thought despite himself, to have _clothes,_ rather than just different sets of costumes.  
  
Clark was still chattering about anime, his voice ebullient.  Bruce was half-listening as they made their way down the street, refusing to get drawn too far into the fannish conversation.  Sure, he'd watched some anime in his time, but he wasn't quite so shameless as to wear his geek credentials openly like Clark did.  In fact, the Kansan was--  
  
Bruce's train of thought derailed abruptly in front of a store.  Clark's puzzled voice was at his ear:  "What's up, Bruce?  Bruce?"   
  
Ignoring Clark, Bruce darted into the store and picked up a tiny camera.   < What's the resolution on this? How many megapixels? > he demanded of a store clerk, who looked a little taken aback by the intense _gaijin_ 's questions.  The camera next to it was fractionally larger but was a Single Lens Reflex model, the smallest he'd seen of that style.  Bruce stood for moment, weighing a camera in each hand thoughtfully, then bought them both, to the clerk's delight.  As the purchase was rung up, Bruce pulled out his Blackberry and made a quick voice memo:  "Find out who the R&D person at--" he checked the packaging, "--Mihana Camera is and have Lucius hire him or her."  He put away the Blackberry and waved the bag of cameras at Clark.  "17.5 megapixels?  In a 120-gram camera?  I love this country.  I can't wait to get home and take this thing apart," he added, before getting distracted by a large display of laptops and tablet computers.  
  
As he was looking at his fifth laptop, Clark said, "Bruce, I'm going to be in the manga store next door...I'll meet you there, okay?"  Bruce grunted and the other man wandered off, humming slightly under his breath.  
  
Eventually he tore himself away and went to the manga store to find Clark happily picking up a small stack of manga.  "You could," Bruce felt compelled to point out, "Just speed-read the entire store with x-ray vision."  
  
Clark pulled a sour face.  "It doesn't feel the same.  I can get the information, but not the _feel_ of the book.  Especially the art."  Clark brought his little pile of manga up to the counter.  "I'll enjoy these four books more at normal speed than I would the entire store at super-speed."  
  
They continued down the street with their packages until Clark was lured into a video store arcade by a crowd gathered around some kind of dance simulator.  They stood and watched two young Japanese stomping and clapping in time with the machine.  
  
"Not much fun when you can't relax and play to your full ability, I bet," said Clark a little wistfully.  
  
"If we play as well as we could we'd gather a huge crowd and make a spectacle of ourselves," Bruce agreed.  "No good."  There was a silence;  the two Japanese teens seemed to be having a great time.   
  
Bruce looked over at Clark.  "I bet I can get a _lower_ score than you in that game."  
  
Clark laughed.  
  
It was surprisingly difficult, they discovered when their turn came, to play as poorly as possible.  Well-honed senses of rhythm and professional pride ingrained at the unconscious level hindered their attempts to completely tank their scores, but they did badly enough that the admiring crowd scattered in horror fairly quickly, leaving them free to stomp randomly and curse when they accidentally completed combos.   
  
Clark ended up "winning," his score lower by a few points.  Bruce scowled at the display.  "How'd you beat me?  We're both experts at looking incompetent."  
  
Clark smirked.  "But I've had more practice looking _clumsy_ than you have.  Bruce Wayne might be a feckless idiot, but he's in good shape, plays polo and handball and all that.  He doesn't trip over his own feet."  
  
Bruce grunted somewhat irritably as they wound deeper into the arcade.  They rounded a corner and both stopped short.  
  
Tucked in the back, a fighting game flashed garishly:  "Super Hero Arena!  Fight of Champions!"  Familiar bright figures adorned the machine, drawn in macho poses.   
  
Clark grinned delightedly and punched Bruce lightly on the arm.  "Dibs on Batman!" he called as he dashed to the machine.  
  
Bruce drew up next to him and chose Superman, casting Clark a sidelong glance that was half-laughter and half-challenge.  "You're toast, Kent," he said smugly.   
  
"Just you wait," Clark shot back, studying Batman's combo moves intently.   
  
The game started as each character walked into the arena--in this case, an extremely inaccurate representation of the Batcave.  "For truth, justice, and the American way, I will crush you!" announced the little Superman avatar, making Clark growl testily.  
  
The Batman avatar said, "I am the night," and Bruce jerked a little.   
  
"What the--hold on a second, don't fight yet.  Make him say something else," he said.  
  
"Huh?  Okay." Clark hit the "taunt" button and the Batman figure announced, "You cannot hope to prevail against me!"   
  
"That's kind of a lame taunt," Clark mused, then noticed Bruce was bristling.  "What?"  
  
"Did you hear that voice?  I sound like Slade Wilson!  What the hell?"  
  
Clark hit the taunt button again and was forced to agree that Batman's voice actor sounded distinctly like the Deathstroke the Terminator.  "Do you think he moonlights as a voice actor?"  
  
Bruce was outraged.  "That is _it,_ Kent!  You and that villain-voiced parody are going down!"  
  
"In your dreams," Clark muttered.  The two avatars clashed, and after a moment it was clear Clark was having some difficulty with his controls.  "Dang it," he said irritably, "I'm hitting the combo buttons too fast, the machine isn't registering them."  
  
"Sucks to be stuck with super-speed, huh?" smirked Bruce.  He hit a set of buttons and the Superman on the screen started to wind up with some impossibly sparkly super-move.  
  
Clark danced the Batman figure close and jabbed Superman in the stomach once, interrupting the combo and making Superman emit an almost comedic "oof!"  
  
"No fair," gritted Bruce.  
  
"All's fair in love and video games, Bruce."  The game continued that way for some time, with Bruce starting impressive super-moves and getting punched or kicked once by Clark's Batman.  Eventually, however, Clark's fingers got jammed up again and the Superman on the screen managed to deliver a volley of terrifying blows, accompanied by a blast of heat vision, and the Batman avatar was obliterated.  
  
"Eep!" said Clark.  
  
Bruce dusted off his hands, feeling rather satisfied.  "Take that."  
  
Clark looked at him rather speculatively.  "You know, you could have thrown that fight and saved Batman the embarrassment."  
  
Bruce felt a sudden, unreasonable fury shake him.  He glared at Clark, eyes narrowing.  "I don't _care_ if _Batman_ wins.  That doesn't matter.  What matters is _I_ win."  He tapped himself angrily on the chest.  " _Me._   Bruce Wayne."  He noted almost abstractly the fear under the anger and hoped it didn't show in his voice.  
  
"Ah," said Clark.  "So _that's_ who you are."  The tone could have been joking, stating the obvious, but it was instead nearly affectionate.  Clark was smiling as if _he_ had won the video game.  "Nice to meet you, Bruce."  
  
Bruce growled irritably and brushed by him to leave the arcade, but the anger had ebbed nearly as quickly as it had spiked, leaving him feeling merely tired and empty.  
  
Back out on the street, he leaned against a wall and watched the crowd flow by.  Clark stood next to him quietly.  Bruce considered what he still had to do tonight and felt his courage falter somewhat.  He had meant to do it alone, he probably should do it alone.  Clark's shadowy figure next to him was reassuringly solid, very real.  He cleared his throat and felt Clark turn to look at him.  
  
"There's one more thing I have to do tonight.  You can join me if you like.  It's...a little personal, but..."  He wasn't sure how to finish the sentence from there so it trailed off lamely into the crowd noise.  
  
This time Clark didn't smile.  "Lead on," he said, stepping away from the wall.  
  
"You don't know where we're going."  
  
"Do I need to?"  Clark's voice was only slightly amused.  "I trust you, Bruce."  
  
Bruce wasn't sure when exactly he'd earned that trust.  For a moment he wasn't even sure if he particularly wante d that trust.  But he seemed, for some reason, to have it.  
  
And he really didn't want to face Seio's family alone.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark and Bruce visit a home, a grave, and a bar on a cold and windy night.

_No one spoke,_  
_The host, the guest,_  
_the white chrysanthemums._  
_\--Ryouta_  
  
Clark followed the dark figure through the streets of Tokyo.  "You still haven't told me where we're going."  He picked up the pace enough to draw alongside Bruce.  "It would be nice, you know, to have a little time to figure out whether I'm going to be dealing with yakuza, aliens, or old ladies serving tea.  Or, I suppose, old lady yakuza aliens.  Serving tea."  
  
Bruce halted abruptly, the line of his jaw revealing, perhaps, a desire to laugh that he didn't wish to give in to.  "We're going to Sei--to Matsunaga's house."  His leather jacket brushed against Clark like wings as a gust of wind swept through the alley.  
  
"I thought we'd already been to his place."  It seemed like a very long time ago that they had been in the cluttered apartment, since Clark had first seen the garroted body.  
  
"That was his work apartment, located over the family business headquarters.  We're going to his home."  
  
They wound through maze-like streets seemingly almost at random.  "Bruce, no offense, but you do know where we're going?"  
  
Bruce stopped and cocked a dark eyebrow at him.  "Do me a favor, Clark:  No more stupid questions tonight."  
  
Clark shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.  "I try not to make promises I'm not sure I'll be able to keep," he muttered, following after the other man.  
  
They eventually came to a small, attractive house, tucked between apartment buildings.  Bruce rang the bell on the gate and waited.  Only a very slight shifting from one foot to the other betrayed any emotion;  from a man usually so stoic and controlled it was as if he had announced his unease to Clark with a bullhorn.  
  
The speaker on the door buzzed to life.   < Yes? > said a woman's voice.  
  
< My name is Bruce Wayne.  I'm--can I talk to you? >  
  
There was a pause.  After a moment, the gate opened to reveal a woman about the same age as Clark and Bruce, dressed in slacks and a sweater, her dark hair long around a face marked with recent sorrow.  < Won't you come in?  It's quite cold out tonight, > she said softly.  
  
Clark and Bruce found themselves seated side by side on a sofa, cups of hot green tea steaming on the coffee table in front of them, the woman sitting on a chair across from them with her hands folded in her lap, her hair drawn like curtains on either side of her downturned face.  There were white flowers in vases everywhere.  The silence stretched until Clark became uncomfortable, and then it stretched longer.  
  
Quiet footsteps, and a small boy, about five years old, entered the room.  A fringe of dark hair framed a round face and wide almond eyes, staring at the two foreign guests.  Clark and Bruce gazed back solemnly.  The boy raised a hand politely.  "Hello," he said in English, with the Japanese accent that made it sound like "Haro."  
  
"Hello," Bruce responded, and the boy bowed, his face serious.  
  
< Are you ready for bed, Tsutomu? > said the woman.  
  
< Yes, Mother. >  
  
< Can you tuck yourself in?  I'll be up to read you and Jin a story soon. >  Clark could hear the sounds from the second floor of a much younger child, maybe a toddler, cooing to himself.  
  
< Yes, Mother.  Good night, > the boy said, giving her a kiss on the cheek before leaving.  
  
Another silence, broken this time by Bruce.  < He has his father's eyes, > he said.  
  
Seio's widow brushed back her hair and raised her face to meet Bruce's gaze.  < He does. >  She nodded slightly.  < You're Bruce Wayne.  My husband spoke of you.  His American friend. >  She waited.  Clark had the impression waiting was something she had become very good at in her life.  
  
< I would like you to know that...that your sons will have their college education covered.  A trust fund. >  Bruce's Japanese was more awkward than it had to be;  Clark wasn't sure if he was feigning incompetence or merely uncomfortable.  
  
The woman's eyes flashed suddenly and her chin set.  < My husband was the heir to the Matsunaga corporation!  We will be perfectly fine without your help. >  
  
There was a hint of steel in Bruce's level tone.  <With all due respect, that is not true.  I know perfectly well that your father-in-law disapproved of your marriage and that he did not appreciate your husband's attempts to reform the business practices of the company. >  The woman's face went stiff.  < You have your husband's pension, but you will see nothing from the Matsunaga corporation. >  Bruce's voice softened somewhat.  < You will need some help.  Let me help, Asaka- _san_.  >  
  
< I do not wish to be obligated to a stranger's charity. >  
  
Bruce looked down at his hands.  < I understand your feelings.  But it would grieve me if Seio's children were not to live the life they deserve because of your pride.  I don't think he would have wanted that. >  
  
Asaka's lips were tightly compressed and her nostrils white and pinched--not with anger, but the effort to hold back tears.  Bruce remained silent.  Clark said nothing either, wondering why on earth Bruce had wanted him along for this, as if he could help this woman and her despair at all.  After a moment, she took a long, shuddering breath and touched her eyes gently with a bit of lace from a pocket.  < Well, > she said softly.  < I will consider it. >  
  
Some of the tension left Bruce's shoulders, as if he had won the argument.  Perhaps he had.  < Thank you. >  
  
The woman stood up.  < Please wait a moment. >  She left the room.  Clark stared into his tea cup and didn't look at Bruce.  After a moment Asaka returned with an envelope of creamy heavy paper embedded with tiny blue threads.  < He told me that if you got in touch with me, I was to give you this. >  
  
Bruce looked at the proffered envelope for a moment, saying nothing.  Then he reached out and took it, very gently, and put it away without opening it.  < Thank you again. >  
  
Asaka looked at Bruce's face for a long time, blinking back tears.  < His ashes are in the family graveyard, > she said at last.  < They were interred there just today. It's private property. >  
  
Bruce bowed.  < I understand. >  
  


* * *

  
Batman stood in the cemetery, an icy wind billowing his cape around him.  The angular, narrow Japanese gravestones stretched into the inky blackness, crowded together with no spaces between them, no green to break up the bleak expanse of gray stones.  Scattered among the gravestones were wooden sticks with names written down their lengths.  Batman was standing in front of a stone heaped with white flowers, largely scattered now by the wind.  
  
Superman hovered slightly nearby, gusts crackling through his cape as well.  Batman reached into a belt pocket and removed something:  a tiny chip of dark blue porcelain.  He put the fragment in front of the stone and bowed.  Very softly, he said, "If only you have patience, all that has ever been..."  The wind snatched his words away and he didn't finish the sentence.  They stood there for a while, the whistling sound across the stones lying between them.  
  
"This is why I don't have friends, Clark," Batman said.  His voice was as bleak as the wind.  
  
"I'm a little more resilient than most people," Superman noted.  
  
Batman's shoulders lifted very slightly in something like a shrug.  "That's not really the point."  Another long silence.  "I can't stop you from calling yourself my friend, I suppose."  
  
Clark started to say something, then stopped and reconsidered.  "Would you...like some time alone here?"  
  
For the first time Batman turned his dark head to look at Superman.  "Actually, Bruce Wayne would rather like a drink.  And he wouldn't mind some company."  
  


* * *

  
Bruce put the empty sake cup back down on the table gently.  It was pretty good sake.  
  
"Do you want to talk about him?"  the man across the table asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose and refilling both their glasses.  
  
"No."   The single word was brutally short, but Clark didn't seem offended.  Bruce sipped the next glass of sake, then put it down.  "What I wanted to talk about was my ward, Dick."  
  
This seemed to surprise Clark a little.  "What about him?"  
  
"You've been too polite to mention it, but if you continue to work with me, and if Dick someday joins me, your secret identity will most likely be in the hands of a teen-ager.  In fact, if you get off the plane at the same time as me in Gotham tomorrow, he'll know you're Superman.  Doesn't that bother you?  Didn't you say no one but your parents and I knew your secret?"  
  
Clark contemplated the clear sake in his glass for a moment.  "Well, there's Lana."  
  
"Lana?"  
  
"Lana Lang.  We kind of almost dated back in high school."  
  
"Kind of almost dated?  And you told her about your powers?"  Bruce made a mental note to look up this Lang woman and keep track of her.  
  
Clark frowned.  "I trust her."  He looked up at Bruce, eyes steady.  "And if you feel you can trust the bo--Dick, then I can trust him too.  When I say I trust you, Bruce, I mean it.  That's not a casual turn of phrase for me.  And I know that your trust is not lightly given either."  
  
Bruce took a long sip of sake and looked at the man across the table from him, who had gone back to studying his glass like it was terribly interesting.  He remembered, in the involuntary flash of an instant, how he had felt in the moment when Kyodai put his knife to Clark's neck.  Which was ridiculous--rationally, the only person in danger of being hurt there was Kyodai, when his dagger shattered on that invulnerable column.  
  
Ridiculous.  
  
"No, it's not," he agreed with Clark eventually.  Clark looked at him with something like hope in his eyes, a hope which dimmed when Bruce didn't add anything to the statement.  It didn't go away entirely, however.  
  
Bruce drained his cup.  "Time to head back."  
  


* * *

  
Clark walked beside Bruce though the wind-lashed streets, the towering buildings forming canyons that funneled wind into rivers of force.  Bruce's gait was very slightly unsteady, from the drink or the wind Clark couldn't tell.  He put out his arm toward Bruce, but the other man shrugged him off irritably.  "I don't need your support."  Clark backed off slightly, eyeing Bruce's pale, set face, the dark hair tossed by the wind.  Bruce's eyes had the inward-turned look Clark remembered from his farm days, that of an animal in pain too great to bear.  His eyes, Clark realized abruptly, were the same color as that chip of porcelain on Seio Matsunaga's grave.  
  
Safely back in the hotel, out of the wind, Clark pushed his unruly hair off of his forehead again and followed Bruce to their rooms.  Bruce didn't say anything at all until Clark's door was open;  then he called down the hall.  "Clark."  
  
Clark turned a little more quickly than he had wanted to.  "Yes?"  
  
"Thank you.  For coming along tonight."  
  
Clark made a small scoffing sound.  "I was no help at all.  I didn't even say a single word to her."  
  
Bruce started to enter his room, going far enough in that Clark could only see his hand on the door frame.  "I didn't ask you along to help Asaka," he said.  The door started to close.  
  
"What are friends for?" said Clark, a little less casually than he had wanted to.  
  
The door stopped moving for just a second, then finished swinging shut.  
  
Clark entered his own room and lay down on the bed fully clothed.   
  
It was supposed to be a hypothetical question.  So why did it seem so important?  
  
He lay there for a long time, unsleeping.  The lights of Tokyo sparkled outside. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark and Bruce return to America and are waylaid by Dick Grayson. Dinner at the Manor and hints of spring to come.

_  
It is snowing, Winter,_  
 _It is snowing._  
 _But the flakes_  
 _Are flowers also._  
 _See, it is already Spring_  
 _By the cloud way._  
 _\--Anonymous geisha song_  
  
Bruce Wayne settled into his narrow coach-class seat.  "I hope you appreciate the fact that I've passed up business class just to salve your conscience, Clark."  
  
"Oh, I do," Clark said earnestly, no hint of sarcasm in his voice.  It was that lack of sarcasm, Bruce mused, that was so terribly off-putting about the man sometimes.  It wasn't that Clark couldn't be ironic or subtle--Bruce had seen both on this trip--but he was almost never sarcastic or sardonic.  
  
For Bruce, it felt like sparring with someone who refused to use a weapon at all while you brought along your sharpest blades.  
  
Which made it all the more annoying that _he_ seemed to end up flat on the metaphorical mat about half the time.  
  
Bruce crunched morosely on his little bag of pretzels as the plane droned on through the Pacific sky.  Clark had pulled out one of his new manga and was reading it intently, his brow furrowed.  It seemed to feature some kind of anthropomorphic reindeer and a stretchy boy.  Bruce closed his eyes and imagined he was out on patrol in Gotham again, turning the echoing roar of the plane into the swoop of wind through his cape, the claustrophobic rows of seats into the skyscrapers hemming in the darkness.  Just a handful more hours and he would be back.  
  
He had missed his city.  
  
"Bruce?"  He jerked awake at Clark's voice.  
  
"What?  Did I say something?"  
  
"No."  Clark's eyes were slightly concerned.  "You were just kind of muttering to yourself and twitching a bit.  Were you having a dream?"  
  
Bruce groped for the fragments of his dream.  He and Clark had been back at the dojo, and Clark had stumbled and broken Yoru- _sensei_ 's perfectly imperfect tea bowl, the fragments rocking on the floor before Bruce's horrified eyes.  But the Kryptonian had just smiled at Bruce, his voice warm:  "I'll fix it better than before, I promise..."   
  
The images were dissolving like gossamer now;  he had a vague impression that Clark had fixed the bowl with something like sapphire dust, the mended seams gleaming cerulean blue.  He had put something in it and handed it to Bruce...what had he put in it?  
  
The dream slipped around the edges of Bruce's mind and was gone.  
  
Bruce shook his head at Clark's anxious look.  "Nothing unusual."  He looked up at the screen at the front of the section, looking for something to change the subject.  "How long until we land?"  
  
"We've still got a few hours."  
  
Bruce nodded and lapsed back into silence for a while.  Eventually, however, he was forced to clear his throat and address Clark, pulling the other man from rapt contemplation of the airplane airspeed and time to destination display:  "Clark.  Since you're going to probably meet Dick at the airport, I have to tell you something, so you won't be taken aback."  Clark was looking at him now, waiting.  "Dick--well, he has...I guess the term would be a pretty severe case of hero worship.  It's a little...intense and could be...awkward."  
  
"Well, can you blame him?"  Clark's voice was amused and a bit smug, and Bruce stared at him.  He thought he'd gotten to know Clark fairly well, but _this_ was an arrogant streak he hadn't seen before.    
  
Clark raised his eyebrows at Bruce's expression.  "Oh, come on.  It's only natural.  I mean, you've taken him in, given him a fabulous home, become his mentor...not to mention you're..."  He trailed off and made meaningful fluttering motions with his hands, eyebrows raised conspiratorially.  "The kid would have to be made of stone not to worship you."  
  
There was a long pause as Bruce continued to stare at his traveling companion, who was still grinning indulgently.  "I meant Superman, Clark.  Dick idolizes Superman."  Clark looked rather blank, and Bruce looked away from that symmetrical face.  Something twisted inside him, an emotion too complex to analyze or name.  "If Superman had been there at the circus that day, instead of me...his parents would still be alive."  It twisted again at the shocked look on Clark's face, a tangled, barbed spiral, forcing him to repeat himself.  "Superman would have saved them.  Of course Dick adores him."   
  
Clark's mouth hung open for a while, almost comically at a loss.  "That's...no.  No, Bruce.  Don't say that."  Bruce started to speak again but Clark talked over his words, leaning forward, his mouth suddenly set stubbornly.  _"No._   I'm not saying he doesn't look up to Superman, lots of kids do, but Superman could never be more important than you in his life."  
  
"You can't say that.  You don't know him."  
  
"I know _you."_   Clark's dark eyebrows were drawn sternly down;  his blue eyes fervent behind the thick glasses.  Then he broke abruptly into a smile, sweetly lopsided and slightly surprised.  "I know you," he repeated, almost wonderingly.    
  
Bruce looked away.  After a while he pretended to go back to sleep again, feeling the air pressure shifting around them as the airplane slowly descended toward Gotham.

* * *

  
Clark stretched his legs and was jostled from a variety of directions simultaneously in the airplane aisle as the passengers waited for the doors to open.  He and Bruce made their way down the runway, picking up their luggage and passing through customs without a hitch, then entering the airport proper.  
  
"Bruce!"  Clark recognized the voice from his phone conversation at the dojo;  the boy attached to it darted out of the crowd and threw his arms around Bruce in a hug entirely devoid of self-consciousness.  Perhaps only Kryptonian perception could have caught the minute hesitation on Bruce's part before returning the hug;  if Dick did he gave no sign of it.  "Welcome back!"  The boy stepped back and tugged at Bruce's hand, almost dancing in his eagerness.  He was gangly in an early-adolescent way that should have been awkward, and somehow was not at all.  "Alfred's waiting out front, let's go home!"   
  
Bruce followed Dick's pull with a slight laugh, allowing himself to be dragged down the hall a few steps, then stopping.  "Dick, hold on.  I'd like you to meet--well, this is Clark Kent.  The reporter for the Daily Planet I've been traveling with."  
  
Dick went completely still, staring at Clark.  After a moment, Clark put out his hand.  "Richard?  I'm Clark.  Nice to meet you."  
  
The boy's gaze darted from Clark's hand to his face, then back again.  He didn't move.  
  
Bruce put a hand on Dick's shoulder.  "It's generally polite to shake hands when someone offers, Dick."  
  
Dick flushed crimson, then went absolutely white, then reached out and shook Clark's hand, turning scarlet again as he let go.  "Hi," he mumbled.  
  
Clark couldn't help smiling at the boy's consternation.  "Bruce mentioned that you've been working on a book report on _Where the Red Fern Grows_?  I loved that book when I first read it at your age."  
  
"You've read _Where the Red Fern Grows_?"  Dick looked stunned at the idea, either that Superman read books like mortals did, or at the idea that Superman had once been the same age as him.  
  
"It's kind of a dark book to give a kid for a book report," Bruce growled as they walked down the concourse toward baggage claim.  "Killing those dogs off like that."

"It's not--that's not--" Dick struggled to express himself, darting ahead of the two older men and walking backwards in front of them, nimbly dodging other pedestrians without really noticing it. "It's more than that, it's got more than that, it's--" He broke off, looking rather helpless.

"The narrator suffers when his dogs die, but he learns that loving means loss that we can't shield ourselves from. That to love fully is to risk losing what we love, and that's why love matters," Clark said quietly.

Dick swung back to face Clark, eyes shining. "That's right, that's just what I wanted to say in my report!" he exclaimed. "Yeah." He nodded with satisfaction. "Thanks."

Clark shared a smile with the kid, whose self-consciousness seemed to have retreated somewhat. "My pleasure. It's a good book. And not just for children," he added toward Bruce's back, continuing down the concourse toward the transportation area.

Finally outside, Clark gave the two Gothamites a tentative wave on the sidewalk in front of the airport. "Well, I'm off to catch a train back to Metropolis. Thanks for having me along, Bruce."

"No problem," said Bruce.

Dick looked from one man to the other. "Aw, Bruce, can't we have Mr. Kent over for dinner tonight? He can still get back to Metropolis on the late train, and you promised we could have him for dinner sometime, you _promised._ "

"You're the one who invited him; I never made any such promise," Bruce said irritably.

Dick just looked at him.

"I suppose he can come and have dinner with us if he feels like it, though."

Dick cast a limpid look at Clark. "Please?" When Clark hesitated he added, " _You_ really _did_ promise to come over for dinner. You've never seen the Manor, have you? I could show you around, I've explored all of it."

Clark was forced to admit to himself that he was curious about what kind of place Wayne Manor might be. As he considered, a limousine pulled up to the curb, a white-haired man behind the wheel. The driver got out of the car and opened the trunk as Bruce slung his luggage into it. "A pleasure to see you again, sir," he said with a crisp British accent.

"You too, Alfred," said Bruce. He waved toward Clark. "This is Clark Kent. He'll be our guest for dinner tonight."

Clark blinked. Apparently that was decided, then. The driver--Alfred--inclined his head politely toward Clark, and Dick pulled on his sleeve until he entered the limousine, creamy leather upholstery soft and fragrant all around him.

Dick spent the drive back grilling Bruce about his trip; Bruce was forthcoming about the details of Japanese culture and life, fairly straightforward about the search for and defeat of Kyodai. He didn't mention Seio Matsunaga at all.

After passing through a rather ominous wrought-iron gate and up a winding driveway, the car pulled up in front of a stone mansion of Gothic design, looming against the pearly-gray winter sky. They went through a front door of heavy, dark walnut and into a building the likes of which Clark had only seen in magazines and during burglar apprehension. Superman generally didn't get much of a chance to gape at the palatial estates he protected, but Clark Kent was under no such restriction; he stared frankly at the crystal chandeliers, marble tiles, huge stone fireplaces as they made their way through the Manor. Bruce seemed entirely at home, as comfortable as Clark would have felt stepping into the Kent farmhouse, and Clark felt suddenly like there was a huge gulf between them, bigger than the division between human and non-human in some ways.

He looked over to see Dick grinning knowingly at him. "It's kind of overwhelming, isn't it?" the boy whispered as Bruce went on ahead of them toward the dining room.

"Uh, yeah," Clark said quietly back. "I'm just--I mean, I grew up on a _farm_. This is all--"

Dick nodded sympathetically. "Oh, I know. I grew up in the _circus_. Bruce never seems to realize how weird this is for--" He broke off, then continued with a shy grin, "--for folks like us." He looked around the hallway again, at the gleaming brass and deeply polished wood, then started toward the dining room, Clark trailing after. "But really, Bruce never seems to think he's _better_ than other people--well, not for having money, at least," he amended cheerfully, and Clark had to smile.

The dining room they ended up in was clearly not the most formal one available, but it was still a marvel of white linen and crystal. The driver of the car brought them lobster Newberg and a salad. The man seemed to be ubiquitous, and Clark wondered how much of Bruce's secrets he was privy to. "Does he run _everything_ around here?" he asked _sotto voce_ while the butler was out of the room.

Bruce nodded with a wry smile. "Oh yes, everything."

Dick announced, "Bruce would fall apart without Alfred," his mouth full of salad.

Clark glanced at Bruce, but Bruce didn't seem to disagree in the least with that assessment. He just nodded again, quirking his eyebrows rather ironically. "I've never really had to find out yet," he admitted.

Dessert was an exquisite baked Alaska; Clark began to suspect that Bruce _had_ to spend so much time leaping around on rooftops just to counteract the effects of Alfred's cooking. The conversation wandered lazily from topic to topic: life in Metropolis,  being a reporter, what it felt like to ride an elephant, just how small Japanese cameras had gotten recently. They never really touched on their non-civilian lives, yet just knowing that it wasn't a secret, a topic that had to be avoided...it made the whole conversation seem so much more relaxed, somehow. Clark realized with a start, listening to Bruce complain about having to get up early tomorrow and meet with someone, that not since Smallville had he felt this comfortable.

This at home.

He looked around the glittering dining room and almost laughed at himself for the thought, but he couldn't quite deny the intuitive truth of it. But before he could consider it more deeply, Dick sprang up from the table. "Let me show you the rest of the place," he cajoled, and Clark laughed and fell in behind him, Bruce trailing a little further back.

Having seen and admired the kitchen, the parlor with its impressive sweeping view out across the greens and to the sea, and Dick's book- and clothing- strewn bedroom, Clark found himself in a warm library, dark walnut bookshelves lining the walls, an ornate grandfather clock ticking on one wall. "Can I--should we--" Dick said, looking at Bruce a touch anxiously and making the tiniest gesture toward the clock.

Clark intercepted the glance between them, Bruce's hesitation, and spoke into the moment of silence. "There's no rush for that, Richard," he said easily. "Maybe some other time."

A spark of relief on Bruce's face, happiness on the boy's. "Yeah, next time," he said with a grin. Dick scooted between them to the door and out, his voice trailing back, "Let me show you something!"

Bruce looked uncomfortable. "It's not--"

"--Not a problem, Bruce," said Clark. "Really."

Bruce straightened a book on the case. "It's just...the dinner was good. Without talking shop. I didn't mind..." he paused again. "...leaving that part out for now."

Clark wasn't sure how to respond, but he didn't have to. From the hallway Dick's voice called, "Check this out!" and Bruce shrugged, grinned a little wryly, and went out.

The large hall had a curving staircase leading up to the second floor. On the second floor landing, Dick was balanced on the railing on his hands, hopping sideways. "This is really the best place--" One small hand slipped slightly and he righted himself, legs waving to regain balance; Clark felt the man beside him jerk forward one step, then stop himself. "--best place to practice this," the boy continued.

"That's amazing, Richard," Clark called up to the boy. "I see Bruce wasn't exaggerating when he said you were an incredibly skilled acrobat."

Dick's entire posture seemed to light up like a smile at the double compliment, and he lifted up onto one hand briefly, bouncing once before bringing the other hand back in. "I suppose you could do stuff like this without even thinking about it, really, huh?"

"I could fly over the railing and put my hands on it so it looked like I was balancing, but that kind of would feel like cheating, wouldn't it?"

Dick grunted absent-mindedly, rotating 180 degrees on the railing. "But it isn't like you can turn your powers off, right?"

"Nope."

"Well," the boy continued cheerfully, focusing on his balance, "Wouldn't that make _everything_ cheating, for you?"

Clark was fairly certain that his expression didn't change at all, but beside him Bruce said quietly, "Dick."

The boy looked down at Bruce and suddenly rolled off the railing, his face red from more than exertion. "Oh gosh, I'm so sorry, sir, that was really rude, wasn't it?"

Clark opened his mouth to say that no apology was necessary; beside him Bruce spoke first. "Do me a favor, Dick, and turn off your sense of balance, then get back on the railing." Dick looked further abashed. "Using the abilities one has naturally isn't cheating."

Dick hung his head. "I'm sorry, sir," he repeated.

"You really don't need to call me 'sir,'" Clark said cheerfully; the boy raised his head to see him smiling. "'Clark' is fine."

Torn between embarrassment and entreaty, Dick looked at Bruce. "I'm not supposed to call adults by their first names."

"He calls you 'Bruce,'" Clark pointed out to the other man.

"That's different," Bruce responded. Clark crossed his arms and looked stubborn, and Bruce sighed. "If you insist on his calling you 'Clark,' I suppose that's your decision, isn't it?"

Dick grinned. "Sorry, Clark."

"No problem, Richard."

Bruce rolled his eyes. As he did, his cell phone went off; he checked the caller I.D. and rolled his eyes again. "Vicki Vale," he muttered. "Hold on." He flipped the phone open and spoke into it, smiling. "Hiya, Vicki! Yes, I just got back this afternoon." His voice had skated up into the light, clear register that marked him as Bruce Wayne, playboy billionaire; his posture went relaxed and lazily loose, his face bland and personality-free.

He had seen this transformation before, but Clark couldn't help staring anyway.

Bruce was chattering about the high-quality sushi in Tokyo. "What? I should have called you sooner? I told you, I just got in! Well, yes, five hours ago, yes. But I've been busy, Vicki honey, really!" He paused to listen to the woman on the other end of the line. "I had a guest for dinner tonight. No, not a woman!" he said laughingly. "No, it was Clark Kent." His eyebrows went up as Vicki spoke. "Yes, the reporter for the _Daily Planet_ , you're absolutely correct. What? No, no, he wasn't getting an exclusive interview from me. It wasn't business. He's just--" He paused a tiny moment, his eyes flicking very briefly to Clark. "He's just a friend of mine." He laughed at something the woman said and his face went back to being the vapid and slightly bored playboy's.

But for that one moment, it hadn't been.

"I'm afraid I have to get going," Clark said apologetically after Bruce hung up the phone.  "I don't want to get in to Metropolis too late."

"You could stay here and go early in the morning--couldn't he, Bruce?"  said Dick eagerly, turning to his mentor.

"No, really, I have to get to work early tomorrow anyway and I've imposed on your hospitality more than enough already," Clark said quickly, firmly squelching the sneaking desire to find out if the Manor's beds were as luxuriously opulent as the rest of the furnishings.  Would the Wayne estate have cotton sheets like the _hoi polloi_ , or would they all be black silk?  Clark suppressed a smile at the thought.

"It's no imposition, but I do understand wanting to get home," Bruce said as they walked toward the front door.  "I'll have Alfred give you a ride to the train station."  At Clark's stammered demurrals he added, "I'm not calling you a taxi, and what are you going to do, fly?  It's a short ride, Clark--I promise you won't be putting Alfred out too much." 

The heavy front door opened to reveal the limousine waiting outside.  The earlier clouds had cleared;  the night was cold and crisp, the stars above the Manor very bright.  Clark started for the car, then turned back one more time, holding his shabby little suitcase, feeling awkward.  "Glad to meet you, Richard.  And...thanks for letting me travel with you, Bruce.  It was good to get to know you a little better."

Bruce nodded gravely as Dick beamed beside him.  "It was good to have you there," he said.  His voice was polite and somewhat distant;  Clark couldn't tell if he meant the words as anything other than a formal farewell.

The driver was silent during the drive to the station, although he shot a few curious looks at Clark in the mirror.  For his part, Clark didn't know the man well enough to feel comfortable striking up a conversation with him, so the car remained warm and silent.  Jet lag caught up with Clark abruptly--even Kryptonians have circadian rhythms--and he found himself dozing, his face pressed against yielding leather.

He dreamt in scattered fragments, broken images.  He was walking with Bruce under black tree branches heavy with snow, tinted rose by the sun.  Everything was silent around them.  As they passed under the weighted branches, Bruce reached up to shake them, smiling.  The snow fell, fluttering; and it wasn't snow at all, it was masses of cherry blossoms.  Bruce looked over at Clark, the petals falling around him, the air warm.  His lips moved soundlessly in the vast silence, meaningless in the way dreams are.  But his expression was the same as the moment he had called Clark his friend for the first time.

Clark Kent slept and dreamed of the spring.


End file.
